UPDATED: Cranford High School Goes Remote 1 Day, Possibly More

CRANFORD, NJ — Cranford High School will be remote on Wednesday, and possibly longer, because an individual (student or staff member) has tested positive at the school, Superintendent Scott Rubin said Tuesday night. Two other Cranford schools are presently remote for 14 days, although one is set to resume classes Thursday.

[UPDATE: Superintendent Rubin said Wednesday that after contract tracing, the school can reopen Thursday. Read more here.]

Rubin wrote that the school will be remote "to provide time for a deep cleaning and disinfecting of the building and to conduct the contact tracing" to see who may have come in contact with that person.

"The results of the contact tracing will assist the Department of Health in providing guidance on whether Cranford High School can resume in-person instruction on Thursday," Rubin wrote.

The Health Department will determine who might have been in "close contact" with the person who tested positive.

Meanwhile, Hillside Avenue School is set to return from two weeks of remote learning Thursday, although an individual associated with the school tested positive recently (see link). Orange Avenue School went remote last week.

The town of Cranford provided an update Friday saying there had been four new coronavirus cases confirmed among residents since the day before, for a total of 632 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. (Read more here.)

Over the weekend, the state of New Jersey said it had confirmed the highest number of new cases since in April. On Sunday, the State of New Jersey reported 18 new fatalities since the day before, and a record high of 4,540 new cases, following 4,395 positive cases on Saturday. Before that, the highest one-day total was 4,391 on April 17.

Doctors have said that a number of factors are contributing to the drop in the death rate since spring, including people getting test results (and thus treatment) sooner, more protective equipment available in hospitals, and doctors becoming better able to treat the virus. However, the virus still can have long-term effects.

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