Coronavirus: Fairfield schools wiping desks after local case

The Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District said Thursday it has ordered staff to wipe down and disinfect shared surfaces such as desks after health officials announced what may be the nation’s first case of community spread of the deadly coronavirus in Solano County.

The move comes after federal and state health officials Wednesday afternoon confirmed that a resident of Solano County is infected with the novel coronavirus despite no known exposure either through travel to China where the outbreak originated or another infected person. That raises concern that the virus may be spreading in the community, not just among overseas travelers.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that he will discuss California’s response in a 10:30 a.m. news briefing with state health and emergency services officials.

“Last night, the CDC confirmed the first case of Novel Coronavirus in Solano County,” the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District, which serves 21,400 students, said in a notice on its website. “While this may be alarming and cause fear, we want to assure you that FSUSD is taking precautions to keep our school sites disinfected and clean. Our staff will wipe down commonly shared surfaces every day with disinfectants.”

The district said “students and staff are encouraged to frequently wash their hands, cover their nose and mouth when sneezing and coughing, and stay home if they are sick.” But the district also noted that while the outbreak originated in central China in December, the coronavirus “is not specific to any single race or ethnicity.”

“It is important to speak with your children about cultural sensitivity during this challenging time,” the district said.

Fairfield, a city of 108,000 between San Francisco and Sacramento, is home to Travis Air Force Base. That was among five military bases in the country where U.S. citizens returning from recent trips to China were quarantined for 14 days, a period health officials say when they would show symptoms of the coronavirus disease being called COVID-19.

The novel coronavirus is from the same family of pathogens that caused the deadlier 2003 SARS and 2012 MERS outbreaks. It has infected more than 81,000 in nearly 40 countries and killed nearly 3,000.

The novel coronavirus does not appear to be as deadly as SARS, which killed about 9 or 10 percent of those infected, or MERS, which killed some 30 to 40 percent. So far about 0.7 to 2 percent with COVID-19 have died. But that is still more than the 0.1 percent who die from seasonal influenza.

But COVID-19 spreads fairly quickly, with each infected person passing it on to about 2 to 3.1 other people. It already has infected 10 times as many people as the 2003 SARS outbreak. By comparison, each person with seasonal influenza gives it to about 1.3 other people, and a person with measles can spread it to 12 or more others.