Framingham Elementary Receives COVID Positive For Pooled Testing

FRAMINGHAM – One of the district’s nine elementary schools has received a COVID positive response to pooled testing.

The Framingham Public School district was approved for pooled testing by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in January.

It began using the pooled testing in February when phase I & 2, and eventually phase III students returned to the classrooms. Yesterday, phase IV students, in cohort B, began their return to the classrooms. Cohort A will return on Monday.

The positive pooled test result came from Brophy Elementary school.

Those students in the pooled testing will now need to have individual COVID-19 tests.

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“These tests combine respiratory samples from several students and then conduct one laboratory test on the combined pool of samples to detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. If a pooled test result is negative, then all individuals within that pool are presumed negative and may remain in school. If a pooled test result is positive, then all individuals in the pool must be retested individually,” explained Tremblay back in January.

If any of the individual tests come back as positive, they will appear in the public school district’s coronavirus dashboard.

Pooled positive results do not appear in the district’s dashboard.

Tremblay told the 9-member School Committee last night March 3, the district has administered about 4,000 tests, and has a rate of positivity is 0.17%.

In comparison, the City of Framingham rate of positivity is over 3 percent.

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Tremblay said in the last two months, the district has had 8 positive cases.

The district does not state when it reports positive cases if they are a teacher, staff, or a student.

Since the 2020-21 school year began, the district has had 50 positive cases, as of this morning, March 4.

Framingham High School has reported the most cases in the school year at 11. Fuller Middle School is second with 7 cases.