Mason Dixon Elementary School conducted its learning online Monday after a student tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend.
Monongalia Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said the district made the decision to close and disinfect the school — pending other test results from a sibling of the student who also attends there.
In-person learning was expected to resume today, he said.
“We have to take these things on a case by case basis,” the superintendent said.
“And in this case, it just seemed better to wait.”
Initial trace-testing by the county health department, meanwhile, indicates the student came in contact with the virus outside of the building.
“So we know it’s not being spread from within the school,” he said.
That seems to be a trend in West Virginia, Dr. Clay Marsh said last week.
Marsh, the state’s COVID-19 czar, said rates of transmissions in public schools currently amount to less than .1% for students and less than .2% for teachers.
However, Marsh said, that still shouldn’t mean an easing of the vigilance.
Mason Dixon, which houses students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, is near Clay-Battelle Middle-High School in Blacksville, which dealt with a coronavirus situation of its own two weeks ago.
That was after a graduate student from WVU who was interning as a strength and conditioning coach for the football team initially tested positive for the coronavirus.
The team cancelled a game and went into quarantine for a number of days until subsequent tests came back negative.
Earlier, a staffer at Morgantown High School had tested positive, along with an employee and other student at North Elementary.
Across West Virginia, the state Department of Education is reporting 19 outbreaks across 59 schools.
The department defines an outbreak of two or more confirmed cases among students or staff who are “epidemiologically linked” to a school setting.
