The first confirmed coronavirus case in St. Louis and Missouri was announced on Saturday. A 20-year-old woman who was studying in Italy tested positive at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis.
She was released from the hospital and told to self-quarantine with her parents at home on Thursday.
Hours later the father and sister of the infected woman broke quarantine and went to a father-daughter Villa Duchesne dance Saturday night at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton. They also apparently attended a pre-dance gathering at the house of a Villa student. The daughter is the younger sister of the woman who has Coronavirus.
Now the entire Villa Duchesne and Oak Hill school will be closed on Monday.
St. Louis County Executive Sam Page said Sunday that the patient’s family had been told on Thursday to self quarantine at their home in Ladue.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported County health officials told the father on Sunday “that he must remain in his home or they will issue a formal quarantine that will require him and the rest of his family to stay in their home by the force of law.”
The schools are independent Catholic schools in Frontenac. Villa is an all-girls school for grades seven through 12, while Oak Hill serves coed preschoolers through sixth graders.
Their Catholic upbringing would have taught them to be kinder to others and not expose people to illness for selfish reasons.
A “handful” of seniors from John Burroughs School also may have been exposed to the virus Saturday when they gathered at the house where the pre-dance event had been held earlier.
The 20-year-old woman was on a plane and an Amtrak, and could have infected others there as well.
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