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Students enjoy their lunch spaced out in the gym. This protocol was added to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and to lessen the amount of contact tracing in response to a positive case. PHOTO BY EMILY HELMUTH
Procedures on reporting COVID-19 cases; specific steps to inform public BY ROSALIE DEGENHART ABBY GODSEN assisstant editors COVID-19 has had a heavy impact recently at Crown Point High School as groups of teachers and students have been leaving the school campus to quarantine for two weeks. This past week, CPHS has reported 196 staff and student quarantines, while the entire corporation has reported 683 staff and student quarantines. These cases and quarantines are reported through an email sent out to parents by Chief Human Resource Officer of the Crown Point Community School Corporation Arthur Equihua, who plays a major role in the pro-
cess of contact tracing. CPCSC uses three sources to gain advice on safety protocols during COVID-19. “It’s actually sort of guidance from a number of entities that we lean on for ad vice on how to handle COVID officially. The three main sources we use would be the CDC, the Indiana Health Department, and then our local Lake County Health Department,” Equihua said. Communicating with these departments is an important step in accurately reporting COVID-19 cases. “We have two individuals that are identified as official people to communicate with any of the health departments re-
garding our cases. That would be an administrator from any building and the nurse,” Equihua said. “We really want the nurse to be that initial point of communication, and there’s an interview sheet that she uses, each of our nurses in all of our schools, and, we’ve actually trained our substitute nurses to do this, to work through the standard set of questions that help us understand the case and the potential impact on our school campus sites.” Even before the information of a positive case is released, Equihua comments on how that information is reported to the school in the first place. “We may receive a report of a positive
