COVID Tracking and Threshold

[dawnsparks]

Hello,

I was just reading the ICS Newsletter and have a question about the school's COVID tracking. Can you further explain this:

"We are grateful and hope to be able to stay on campus for as along as possible, but also realize there is a real risk to staying open with the rising cases." 

What is the threshold for ICS to make the determination should the school close due to rising cases? Are there solid numbers you can share? Will the determination be made due to the number of cases and contacts at the school? Or within Addis Ababa? It would be nice to know what are the" real risks" that you are referring to. 

Thank you for any elaboration,

Dawn

[ICS Comms]

Thanks Dawn for your email.

We monitor the Covid situation in Ethiopia and in our community daily and are ready to move to online learning at a moments notice.

We monitor several resources to keep apprised of the risks of Covid worldwide and within Ethiopia. These resources are shared on the ICS website on the Covid-19 Resources page. These resources include the websites of the CDC, the WHO, Johns Hopkins University.  At the same time our Covid taskforce meets regularly and connects with our networks, including international medical communities from 96 different countries to look at and discuss trends globally and within Ethiopia. 

On a daily basis we look at the rising positivity rates in Addis and Ethiopia and monitor positive and exposure percentages on our campus. The percent of positive cases on the ICS campus has been under 1%. While we do not have a set threshold that would instantly activate a move to online learning for the whole school, we do monitor positive cases, exposure and risk trends we may see within the school. 

We firmly believe that every day on campus is better than a day online, and we will try to stay on campus and in person for as long as it is safe for our students and employees. But at the same time, we will move online for the whole school as needed.