Covid exposure on Medford school bus cancels route for the next week

MEDFORD, Ore. —The Medford School District continues to run into problems with staffing bus drivers, and it’s beginning to impact routes. Because of the lack of drivers, buses are doing combination routes. That means they pick up middle school and high school students on the same bus.

The district says the driver on the Oak Grove Elementary bus route 24 was exposed to a student with COVID-19 on the same route. As a result, the driver, along with 60 students had to quarantine.

“We are so tightly staffed so it causes us to cancel the route and that route is one continuous elementary, middle, and high school route,” said MSD Assistant Superintendent Brad Earl.

Oak Grove Bus route 24 is canceled from now until October 5th. MSD says it’s working on strategies like assigned seating, to lower the number of students that need to quarantine when there is a positive case on buses.

Here you can find the available bus routes.

UPDATE: This article was updated to reflect that the bus driver did not test positive for COVID-19, but was exposed to a student with COVID-19. NBC5 News regrets the error.