School officials in Oklahoma say a student knowingly attended classes with the coronavirus on the first day of school, thinking it was safe to do so because the child was asymptomatic.
The student at Westmoore High School in Moore, just south of Oklahoma City, was "under the understanding that since they were asymptomatic ... they did not need to quarantine for the full 14-day-period," school officials told NBC affiliate KFOR of Oklahoma City on Friday.
The Moore Public School District did not respond to requests for comment by phone or email Sunday. It said in a letter to parents that school nurses have "completed tracing within our school to identify students and staff who may have been potentially exposed to the virus through close contact."
The student was identified following an anonymous tip Thursday, the first day of classes, according to KFOR. The child's parents told the school that they had "miscalculated" the end of their child's quarantine and thought it was safe to go to school.
Moore schools announced that another student had also tested positive for the virus and that 22 students who had come in contact with the two students are now quarantining.
"We will do absolutely everything within our power to safeguard and protect our students and our staff," school spokesperson Dawn Jones told KFOR.
"I don't know why people do things, why they make certain decisions, what they know to be true and inform us of," Jones said.
Oklahoma has recorded nearly 48,000 cases of COVID-19, including more than 650 deaths, since the start of the pandemic.
CORRECTION (Aug. 16, 2020, 6:50 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article referred to the student diagnosed with COVID-19 as "he." The student's name and gender have not been made public. A photo caption also misspelled the name of the school. It is Westmoore High School, not Westmore.
