A large Covid-19 outbreak at a Long Eaton school has been linked to a detection of 'super-spreaders', a health boss has said.
Public health director at Derbyshire County Council, Dean Wallace, described how evidence of individuals with particularly high infectiousness had been found after the surge of Covid-19 cases at the Wilsthorpe School in Long Eaton.
It is not known what causes this, but it means the virus was able to spread at a higher rate.
Mr Wallace told Derbyshire Live this scenario mimicked studies on cruise ship outbreaks earlier in the pandemic last year.
He said: “You saw certain clustering of cases and a pattern which points to high infectivity in a certain individual or individuals which will have led to that spread which we saw. That individual may not even have known at the time whether they were infectious or becoming infectious.”
Mr Wallace added that the school's outbreak had provided further lessons.
“It has given us an insight into some of the advantages of some schools having deeper staggers between timetable changes and different entry points into corridors," he said.
“Ventilation systems and the advantages of having the windows open, which some modern buildings have moved away from, have been reinforced to a certain extent.
“That has been under-appreciated previously, the importance of ventilation.”
During the time of the outbreak on the border of Nottinghamshire, Mr Wallace said 86 percent of all the cases in Long Eaton were tied to the school itself, with contact tracing and self-isolation able to quash a much wider outburst.
He confirmed the cases were the Kent Covid-19 variant, not the Indian or South African variants.
It was also discovered that many pupils who tested positive were asymptomatic, showing no signs of having the virus, while others showed different symptoms to the main three.
The main three symptoms are a temperature of 37.8 degrees celsius or above, a new and continuous cough and the loss of sense of smell or taste.
Stomach aches, a sore throat, headaches and muscle ache were among the other symptoms pupils described.
Mr Wallace said the outbreak also showed that health officials cannot do anything effectively or efficiently without the support of the public.
More than 2,000 people came forward to take PCR (polymerase chain reaction) Covid-19 tests, which are more accurate than quicker lateral flow tests but which take up to three days for results to come back.
More than 170 staff and pupils test positive for the virus during the outbreak, with many more required to self-isolate, with Mr Wallace saying there was not a wider issue in the town.
This, he said, mimicked the outbreak at Sudbury Prison in the Derbyshire Dales in March.
More than 50 cases did manage to spill out into the wider community, which were linked back to the school through the council’s contact tracing team.
Mr Wallace said the benefit of pupils and staff carrying out regular Covid testing showed their worth, along with the requirements for face masks, social distancing and regular hand sanitising.
All of these played their part in helping to quantify, track and control the outbreak and reinforced their importance, he said.
He said ventilation systems and having windows open also proved to be valuable.
Regular lateral flow tests (which take 30 minutes), specifically, were a “massive” help, he said.
Mr Wallace added: “You have identified stuff that might always have been there, but you never knew about.
“The other school of thought is that you have tested and identified something early, which, had you not done that, the first you would have known about it is through a widespread community outbreak with lots of people showing symptoms until the whole thing tipped over.
“This gave us a huge foot up.”
