Unvaccinated, unmasked teacher spreads Covid-19 to students, CDC reports

An unvaccinated teacher who showed up to her elementary school classroom in Marin County, California, while experiencing symptoms such as "cough, subjective fever, and headache" ended up infecting half of her students with Covid-19 as well as some of their family members, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday.

Officials from the Marin County Department of Public Health initiated an investigation into the classroom outbreak on May 26, three days after the teacher reported testing positive for Covid-19. The teacher, who initially attributed symptoms to allergies, was one of only two staff members that had not been vaccinated at the elementary school.

Among the teacher’s 24 students, 22 who were ineligible for vaccination because of age were tested. Twelve tested positive for the virus, according to the report, written by county health officials and experts at the University of California's Berkeley, Davis and Santa Cruz campuses.