Gone are the days where emails detailing one, two, or even three new COVID cases were sent to MFS students and families. Following the trend of the Burlington County region, MFS has seen a sharp uptick in COVID-19 cases since the beginning of Winter Break and noticed a more dramatic increase since the new year. Now, the focus is on the MFS COVID-19 dashboard, where in a day, one can see anything from a one case increase to a 20 case surge.

The MFS COVID-19 dashboard is a webpage where the CRT logs information about active and resolved cases. It is then further divided into Lower School, Middle School, Upper School, and employee cases.

The dashboard defines an active case as an “​​​​individual who [has] tested positive and [is] currently isolating until symptoms improve and the isolation window of time has been met.”

Between January 1 and January 6 alone, there was a net increase of 18 cases within the MFS community, and after the pooled saliva testing results through Mirimus Labs, this number increased substantially.

On January 7, re-entry test results came back for the faculty and staff samples that were sent to Mirimus Labs on Tuesday, January 4, and there were 12 new COVID cases detected. This translated to an 8.6% positivity rate among employees, and it bumped the total number of cases up to 49.

Two days later, on January 9, student testing results were received. From the results, 34 new student cases were detected: seven Lower School students, five Middle School students, and 22 Upper School students. The total number of active cases rose to 68, which translated to an 8.7% community positivity rate.

Sumin Kim ’23 said, “I was not surprised about the number of cases because Omicron is so easily spread and now vaccinated people are easily susceptible to getting it. I feel like it’s only a matter of time before there is another large outbreak of COVID that happens.”

Kim was not the only student that was not surprised about the number of positive cases. Alizeh Hussain ’24 was “aware there would be a lot of cases after [winter] break,” but said that “the number[s were] still shocking, especially in the Upper School.”

Given the community’s high positivity rate, Head of School Julia de la Torre noted in an email to parents and students on January 9 that she is “certain that [the community] will continue to see cases of COVID on campus, especially in the next few weeks.” But, despite this unfavorable forecast, MFS is determined to keep its doors open: “we are encouraged by our vaccination rates and are hopeful that with our continued layered mitigation efforts, [MFS] will be able to maintain continuity of learning and care for our students.”