001[Applause] [Music] okay [Music] no I mean that's just yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right good afternoon my name is Stacy Moore on the communications coordinator for a month Community School Corporation thank you for attending this joint press conference today and we also are thankful for those who are viewing via livestream today's speakers include mrs. and Englehart president of the Avon Community School Board of Trustees dr. Maggie Horniman superintendent of Avon Schools dr. David David Stockbridge Hendricks County Health Officer dr. Chris box state health commissioner and dr. Jennifer McCormick Superintendent of Public Instruction and I'll spell their names for you and Englehart is a and e en g you know har DT dr. B found Maggie Horniman is ma g g IE h o ER n DM aen dr. David Stockbridge and David d-a-v-i-d st o
002PP e RI CH dr. Chris boxes k R is Bo X and dr. Jennifer McCormack je n ni f er MC c OU r m IC k and dr. harmon will now come to the phone it was work good afternoon this morning we were notified by the Hendricks County Health Department that a second student is displaying symptoms of koban 19 Kona virus the Hendricks County Health Department and Avon Community Schools are working closely to determine the web of individuals who have had direct contact with the two students that web has grown very large while the CDC indicates that exposure to someone with covin 19 Kona virus is only an issue if the individual is already symptomatic which the students were not last week we still believe the most prudent course for our school system is
003to close all Avon community schools through Friday March 20th this will minimize any exposure in large groups and we'll have and we'll allow plenty of time for our buildings and our buses to be thoroughly cleaned all practices extracurricular activities and school events are canceled elearning days will be used to the best of our ability Avon Community School Corporation uses a tool called Schoology to deliver learning materials through extended closures we understand that some families may not have access to the Internet to retrieve these learning materials so we have a forum available on our website where parents may request learning packets for their students only families who are requesting those materials will receive them rest assured that our custodians have already stepped up our cleaning protocols last week using EPA approved cleaners our health care partners
004at Hendrix Community Health confirmed that we are using the same antiviral cleaners used at the hospital some may wonder about foodservice during this extended closure we know that some of our families rely heavily on breakfast and lunch service in our schools a Hmong community school corporations food service department is working on to go options for our students who need food during this extended closure cold food packages will be available to all Avon families packages will include 10 breakfast lunches and meals food packages will be available at a couple of our school building parking lots cedar Elementary and Avon middle school North pickup times will be Tuesday March 10th from 10 a.m. to 12 noon food packages will also be available here in our Avon administration center Monday through Friday from 7:30 in the morning until
0054 o'clock in the afternoon parents will simply be asked to sign in with name student name school building we will ask our parents to limit themselves to one package per school-age student we recognize that you have many many questions and we want you to hear from our community partners and know that we will be constantly providing updated information on our website now I'd like to introduce board president and angle her who will make comments on behalf of the Avon community community school board of trustees thank you Thank You dr. Martin I am an eagle hard I'm school board president and I first want to say thank you to our many partners in the community the state who have provided amazing support from the first phone call yesterday morning - today we your guidance has been
006exemplary and we want to thank you on behalf of the Avon School Board of Trustees I want to emphasize that the board members are focused on the health and the safety of our students and staff we are working side-by-side with the administration team our trusted Health Partners and the Indiana Department of Education to ensure there is minimal further exposure to our students and staff and continue receiving educational services despite our unique situation thank you for joining us we appreciate your support now I'm dr. box our state health commissioner will come forward good afternoon everyone I want to thank dr. stop of itch and superintendent Goreman for including me in this conference today I wanted to take a minute to update you since it's been since the end of last week that I was updating you
007on where we were we had one case as of the end of last week and have added three additional cases since that time you know the original case was a Marion County individual that had contact in Boston out there with individuals who became ill from Ovid 19 our case here in Hendrix County has a similar contact and that individual is able to isolate at home we've had a second case in Hendricks County and this is the only one that we have it's not an adult and that individual is also isolating at home and our third case is in northern Indiana and Noble County that individual is hospitalized in Mobile County they're but stable all of our individuals are stable at this time we have tested 30 individuals and have only these four positives every every
008other test has been negative we are continuing to monitor individuals that are considered to be at at higher risk and they are on home quarantine and that is going very well we continued to work over the weekend when we found out that we had youth that had tested positive and we're very happy to engage with dr. suffrage and with the superintendent and the school board here along with their principals here and we had a lot of very good discussions and I think that they have come to what they think out of an abundance of caution is the best way to make sure that they are protecting all of the youth here in Avon Community Schools I will say that they are exceeding even that which the CDC might recommend that they have to do again
009just trying to make sure that we are keeping the health of the students here and the safety at the utmost of every decision that is made I want to say this is very clear this is not a spring break where everybody runs out and goes to the ball goes to the movies goes to the theater goes to you know whatever museum we really need if we're going to have this work to have these individuals social distance which means that you go home and you read books or you play games with your family or you do your video games or whatever those activities are that you can do at home rather than being out in public because the point of this is to kind of socially distance children and and other individuals I also want to
010say that most of these cases 80% of them are mild and of those cases that become more severe and unfortunately in some rare circumstances can lead to death that's using our high-risk population those who are 16 and older who have other underlying chronic conditions so I think that we all should be thinking about if we're ill that we stay home and we social distance that includes Grandma and Grandpa and other individuals and as you're looking at your community are there individuals out there that might need you to go to the grocery store for them are dropped by the pharmaceutical store so that they don't have to go out right now in public they may be already social distancing themselves we really do want to make sure that individuals in our long-term care facilities are protected
011and I know you're not here about long-term care facilities but again long-term care facilities are a collection of our highest risk population under one roof so if you're sick please don't visit please call them and tell them why you're not visiting but please do not do that and as always the Indiana State Department of Health will continue to engage anytime that our local health officer our local school systems our local school boards reach out and be there for consultation and assistance thank you and now dr. David Stockbridge will come and speak you the Henderson County Health Commissioner health of the circuit good afternoon everyone so I just wanted to first of all start off by once again thanking dr. box and the entire Indiana State Health Department we have been on the phone and texting
012all weekend long often calling her and her fellow staff late late last night so thank you so much and thank you so much as well to superintendent Goreman we have also been texting and communicating constantly trying to get her the information she needs and answer any questions that we can to be useful as a as the Henderson County Health Department like dr. box explained what she's seeing around the state she also gave us a great idea what this virus is all about but I think the biggest message I want to tell the community of Hendricks County is we need to prepare we need to be safe we don't need to panic we really really don't need to panic we need to just once again distance ourselves to some degree and that once again with this
013new with these cases this sorry what I want to say is this is a respiratory virus okay this is simply a virus can be spread by coughing sneezing it could be found on services but it's still just a vise it doesn't look very long on surfaces without human house so how do we defeat it it's pretty simple we wash our hands we wash our hands we wipe down surfaces with very simple cleaners and we just take basic precautions I I can't tell us enough I really just want us not panic prepare wash our hands wipe down surfaces and everything's going to be okay I think it's really all I have to say it's obviously as a Mandrax county health department we will be available questions they will they will be coming up whenever somebody thinks
014that they may have had contact with a patient or they think they may have covet 19 what we would recommend you do is call your office call your physician's office first get guidance from your primary care doctor if they need help or if you get directed to us please feel free to call it's okay we want to make sure that everybody gets the best information possible I think with that so good afternoon to Avon community and to the entire state of Indiana what I would like to start out by saying is please be assured families and communities that the school are the job of schools right now is the safety security and well-being of our students that is our top priority it has been and it will remain remain that way I want to thank
015dr. box she has been amazing to work with and her entire team she has been very inclusive with the Department of Education she's been very transparent she is also sending the message of this is serious but no need to panic I also want to commend governor Holcomb and his team they have also included us in these conversations they understand that there are 1.2 million students sitting in our schools and 78,000 educators and a lot of families that are impacted on that and I want you to feel confident that your state is doing amazing work in a collaborative fashion and that is not to be assumed or taken for granted so I am proud to be a part of that too dr. Harmon and her team it has been amazing here at Avon from that first
016call very receptive Barrett very inclusive has really asked great questions and and taken a very strong leadership role in making sure that the students here at Avon are safe and secure and and and things can move on in a positive manner here in the community nothing is perfect about these decisions and there are challenges that come along with such difficult decisions but I have the confidence and your superintendent and the entire team here at Avon that things will go well I also know - a lot of that depends upon the family's response and so Avon has always been blessed with a community of a lot of families that are very supportive of a school and the decision to make and I do not foresee that changing in the near future as a state across the
017entire state you have superintendents who are very busy being very diligent in reviewing and sometimes revising as necessary their plans that's why we plan and we prepare for days and and situations like this and so we are working with our local health departments who have been extremely inclusive and helpful for our local schools but it's busy but I want you to know that I have confidence in all of our local state superintendents who will keep students their safety their health their well-being as our top priority so again dr. box I cannot thank her enough and her team and feel very confident in the Indiana's in good hands at this time dr. Stockbridge dr. box and dr. McCormick will take a few questions if you have for dr. box I believe dr. Horne Minh referred to
018two students and you referred to one student can you clear that up for us we had only report on positive cases and dr. hormons referral then was about there may it be another child in the community that is showing symptoms of upper respiratory laura's time so the second child hasn't necessarily or at least the test results for the second child have not necessarily come back yet I have no further positive tests okay and can we determine what school that second child was attending that is not information that we give out with regards to patient privacy telephone calls and even people who say they're calling the hotline number and it's not being answered is there a reason why this is apparently not being staffed 24/7 the hotline is being staffed 24/7 from 8:00 to 8:00 it's
019being staffed by a group of ten called individuals who are taking the calls and taking information we are adding to that call center from 8:00 to 8:00 we'll also be adding another shift from 8:00 and the evening to 8:00 in the morning to get additional help because the person that was taking it from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 8:00 a.m. was our state epidemiologist or the epidemiology team and that team is trying to take calls from providers and from individuals who have been exposed to kovin 19 cases and what we're getting is a lot of very concerned citizens asking questions so I would strongly recommend that citizens go first to either is DHS website or the CDC's website to educate themselves many of your questions may be answered right there there's just a ton of information
020there the second thing is in addition to adding more call help for that epidemiologist from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. we're going to be working with our poison control center who we already work with to take calls so that if you are a provider or someone who's from a health care facility we will send that call directly to the epidemiologist and other calls will go through the control if there are definite health care questions in there then we will use I use new tela-health that they are using surveillance system where they have actually healthcare professionals nurses on the phone and answering a lot of questions and helping individuals for free across the state to know whether they should go into the emergency room because they're sick enough to be tested jump like you're overwhelmed no
021sir not at all we're just in the process of gearing up for what we expected can you indicate to us how your investigators go about tracing the web of individuals who may have been in touch with your one positive young student or even the other student who we do not have test results on right so you know it starts with an individual maybe that flew back say from Boston and was exposed there so what flight did they fly on then we get that information to the CDC and the CDC gets information back to us about individuals that live in our communities that set within a certain radius of that individual who became ill those are people that were following up if we have a particular case we're going where were you pretty much every minute
022of the day you know did you go to the grocery store did you go to the pharmaceutical where you were you had a wedding where you you know where you had a conference did you go watch at b-dubs maybe the ball game with everybody so that we can start to trace back close contacts of that individual again this is usually spread with someone that you came into contact with them six feet not just for a brief period of time but a protracted period of time and then we actually reach out to those individuals to make sure that they know they may have been exposed and if those individuals potentially develop symptoms how they can reach us to know how to facilitate medical care have you been able to trace the young child who has tested
023positive back to your original case and that would all be confidential information that I couldn't I couldn't get out what good is it to close schools and send kids home if they're going out and we're associating with other kids or other feminists I mean parents are out there right now swapping babysitters looking after each other's kids what's the good of closing the school that people aren't for me well first of all I asked first before for them to social distance so I understand that they're going to people that be people that have critical jobs and they need to go to their jobs and they may now have three children that you know they can't leave at home all day so maybe the neighbor or someone else in the family can help to watch those children
024so there may be times that there have to be some groups but a group of four to six children is a lot different than a group of 450 kids all eating lunch together all going to recess together all going to the same classroom so the social distancing that we do in smaller groups is very different than what happens in school systems and that's why I took the time to say you know this isn't the time to go to museums it's not the time to go to to watch the movies it's not the time to go out to the bounce house or whatever else that kids like to do it really is a time to kind of stay home hunker down and do things within your home do we know I'm sorry showing symptoms this most
025recent student started showing symptoms on Sunday I believe and how do we monitor folks that are self isolating or how do you tell folks at home to monitor their individual well people are being told they're coming back right now from countries like Italy and South Korea and you know even from across the state where they've been and maybe have been exposed to cases and they're being told by the CDC to self quarantine but the State Department of Health does not get names and numbers for all those individuals because those numbers are actually overwhelming with so many countries involved in this right now so what we do do though is follow individuals that are isolated meaning that they have tested positive for covin 19:00 and we know that they are stuck in their home they may
026need resources from a medical perspective they may need someone to deliver medicines or food to them and they may be separated from the rest of their family because they're isolating from their family also so do medical professionals I mean go knock on their door once a day and take their temperature and you depend on somebody in the house to take that temperature we actually make sure that they have things like tylenol and motrin and a thermometer and a sheet to actually record this and then we usually virtually touch base with them so a lot of times that's over a cell phone where we can look at them and ask you know has your have you developed shortness of breath has your caught cough gotten worse what is your temperature done in the last 12 hours
027and that usually happens twice a day last week there there's so much out there girl we're not getting tested what happens when you get a call-out from someone in the Yvonne community says yeah I have a kid in the school and I have these symptoms are all of those people are now going to be potentially tested how do you separate out right so that's why it helps if you go to your health care provider to talk about your symptoms because we don't want to and we already are just because of the flu season we've already got 85% of our flu tests are still coming back positive in our state so that shows you we're adding the flu on top of the code of nineteen now and most people that have symptoms that's going to be
028related to influenza so what we don't need is to have every person walking into the emergency room and asking to be tested for code 19 first of all we are still carefully following the CDC's guidance and that is that we should test individuals that are hospitalized with severe lower respiratory illness no other indication of what's causing that individuals that are at high risk especially individuals that are in a high-risk setting they have been exposed to kovat 19 and then those individuals that we know we're exposed to Kovan 19 that we are on watch for to make sure that if they develop signs and symptoms we really want to make sure that if our health care prevent professionals develop signs and symptoms because they're going and touching lots of immune suppressed patients very elderly and sick
029patients that if they develop signs or symptoms we need to test them yes sir what's the long-term plan say four months from now somebody's still sick do they have to come to school what's the plan for that right I think that's an excellent question and I think that this is going to evolve and we're going to transition as this disease transitions eventually we'll all get to the point where we just kind of live with coven 19 as a part of the infections that we get during this flu season time probably we're not at that point yet but but what I want to say to the public is that your children what we see with global disease right now across the entire world is that children that get covin 19 not only do very well with
030it but they aren't great spreaders that's the problem but they're their mortality rate with that or their death rate is below influenza so that should be reassuring I hope to families out there that have worries about their kids and I know we spend most of our time worrying about children when we have them even when they're 30 and 31 services to possibly question a higher can an answer can you both address that question also question what the data shows on ATMs and individuals sharing the virus because that's another concern that's out there that they're always a symptomatic of walking around so because this is novel or new virus we don't have as much information as we do about viruses like influenza and other viruses so to tell you that it only lasts for two hours
031or it only hangs in the air for two hours I can't give you those specifics about this virus yet so that is still very up in the air but we do believe that most of these respiratory viruses can live for a time on a surface and that's why it's important to wipe those surfaces down and when you're touching things not to be touching your face your nose your eyes which we all tend to do right that's a normal thing because that's how you're going to introduce that to yourself that washing your hands very frequently somebody in Washington State told me that their grocery store clerks have to set a timer and every every hour they go and wash their hands with soap and water I mean it's really if you're wringing out a big you
032know boarder at that time it goes off you're off and you wash your hands with soap and water so those kinds of things can really protect not only the individuals that we are seeing but the individual the individual people that are serving the population the asymptomatic is still an issue out there we we know that there's community spread so if that is somebody's spreading when they're asymptomatic or somebody who has small symptoms you know when somebody asks me about a kindergartner whether they have symptoms you know kindergartners can be symptomatic and not know it until their fever goes to 102 and then they're like a rag doll then you give them the tylenol and they feel better and they're running around again so symptomatic is hard to tell with some individuals so we don't really
033understand that's another thing about the virus we can't specifically delineate Davenport our plans in place to address what working parents are supposed to do when kids are off for such a long period of time and also as their future plans for a ponds able to do alerting days but what with other districts or other schools might not be able to do this is there a plan in place for now it's a great question so every district is unique in Indiana just kind of a ballpark about 50% of our districts are one-to-one that means one child one device k12 so that is an advantage that doesn't mean that that's a take-home device so that's the other piece of it to have in this conversation so elearning is a great viable option for avon it may not
034be a great viable option for another district so it really goes down to local planning and what makes sense at that local level and making sure that all options are are thought through in which I have the great confidence on our superintendents the other piece of it is you better believe we're going to be on the phones talking to each other about what works what doesn't work what can we learn from Avon or other districts that may go through this so unfortunately Avon doesn't have that benefit right now but we have other schools in other states that have gone through this so a lot of a lot of learning for all of us but a lot of that's a local decision and got them according at this kind of pressure conference and you