COVID-19 clamped down a couple more turns Thursday in Monongalia County Schools.
A teacher at Clay-Battelle Middle/High School tested positive for the coronavirus, and three students he interacted with are now in self-quarantine as a precaution, the district said.
Nine more students from Suncrest Middle are doing the same, after participating in a county volleyball tournament with a private school student who presented with a positive diagnosis the day before.
Details on that student or his school weren’t immediately known Thursday night.
The news prompted the district to cancel the tournament’s remaining matches, Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
Campbell said the district was aware the Clay-Battelle teacher was tested Monday after falling ill earlier.
The quarantining, he said, just made medical sense.
“None of our kids have tested positive so far. We just want to do everything we can to keep people safe.”
Which is becoming increasingly more challenging in a state where the virus is surging.
Thursday’s COVID-circumstances in Mon follow a not-so-happy milestone the day before across West Virginia.
A total of 226 residents suffering from the virus went into the hospital that day.
That’s the largest single-day total for admissions since Gov. Jim Justice shuttered schools and businesses as the coronavirus cloud loomed last March.
Clay-Battelle, meanwhile, will remain open while undergoing a full cleaning by the district’s specially designated COVID-19 disinfection crew.
“We’ve already done what we needed to do,” Campbell said.
“And the school’s not going to be open to students on Friday anyway.”
That’s in accordance with the district’s staggered, hybrid-learning model that’s a mix of in-person and remote learning, which Mon Schools is holding to, through Jan. 20.
The extension was the second big, COVID-related announcement of the day.
Campbell said while the district wants to return to in-person instruction five days a week, he also feels it’s more prudent right now to keep things the same though Thanksgiving and Christmas — two holidays heavy on family get-togethers.
That gives the district opportunity to track cases, if any, two weeks out from Thanksgiving, for example, Campbell said.
“It’s really easy to let your guard down when you’re with family,” he said.
Fourteen days is the general window for the coronavirus to make itself known after a person becomes infected.
“If we want to stay open at all, we’re just going to have to be cautious,” Campbell said.
“We don’t want to put ourselves in a situation with an outbreak and have to shut every school down.”
The state Department of Education defines an outbreak as two or more coronavirus cases in a school building.
Buckhannon-Upshur High School in Upshur County leads the state in that category, with 16 positive cases reported as of Wednesday.
