36 Hanover High hockey players self-quarantine after teammate contracts COVID-19

Three dozen Hanover High School hockey players are self-quarantining after a team member tested positive for COVID-19 over the holiday weekend, the superintendent of schools said Wednesday night.

The athlete is one of five Hanover Public Schools students who have tested positive for the virus over the past two weeks, Superintendent Matthew A. Ferron said in an e-mail. His teammates were tested for the virus on Wednesday, and their results are not yet available, he said.

Two of the other infected students attend the Cedar School, which has pre-kindergarten to first-grade programs; one attends Center School, which includes second through fourth grades; and another is a student at Hanover Middle School, Ferron said in an e-mail to families and staff.

All told, 63 employees and students are self-quarantining because of close contact with an infected person, he said.

“To date, we have not had any staff member test positive, and we have no evidence of any person to person spread related to our schools,” Ferron said. “We continue to test staff and students daily who exhibit symptoms or who have been identified as a close contact of a confirmed positive case.”

Hanover was one of more than 60 communities statewide, including Boston, designated as high-risk in the state’s weekly community COVID-19 report.

There have been 120 cases of the virus town-wide since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a Wednesday report from Patricia Smith, Hanover Public Schools' director of health services. Of those infected, 68.2 percent were male and 31.8 percent were female, according to Smith.

Ferron said the town had 22 confirmed cases of the virus in the two weeks from Sept. 27 to Oct. 10. But at Hanover’s schools, he told the community, “Right now, it changes nothing.”

“We are managing the few student cases that we have, and we work continuously with our Health Services staff, Town Health Department, and the Hanover Fire Department to evaluate, test, contact trace, and communicate each situation as it comes,” Ferron said.