Another 17 students from University High School are in quarantine today, after a classmate tested positive for the coronavirus, district announced.
UHS, however, wasn’t the only building to make roll, Mon Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said Wednesday.
Skyview Elementary, Mountaineer Middle, Morgantown High and Cheat Lake Elementary were also eclipsed by COVID’s shadow, he said.
No one else at Skyview had to quarantine following the positive diagnosis of a student there, the superintendent said.
“Precaution,” was the watchword at Mountaineer when the parents of a student there told the school and district they were in a contact with a person who later tested positive.
Their child was isolated as a “just in case” measure, Campbell said, although he didn’t know Wednesday if the virus had positively presented itself in the household.
The newly isolated at UHS, meanwhile, are now added to the 55 forced to go into quarantine last Friday.
That was after a WVU student intern working on strength and conditioning exercises during tryouts for the boys’ basketball and wrestling teams announced a positive diagnosis.
At Cheat Lake Elementary, the sibling of the UHS classmate who tested positive for COVID is now quarantining, along with 10 other students there.
Every one of the above cases, the superintendent said, came from community spread of the virus and not from a breakout in a school building.
The district undertakes its own contact tracing, Campbell said, in addition to a specially trained disinfecting crew to tackle the buildings where the coronavirus makes itself known, Campbell said.
Mon’s teachers and other employees in buildings have been diligent and enforcing pandemic protocols such as social distancing, mask-wearing and social distancing, he said.
“That’s a 24-hour job,” he said.
And Mon’s students, he said, have been nothing but compliant.
“Every COVID we’ve gotten for so has come the outside and not within the school,” he said.
“I can’t stress that enough. That just speaks volumes to what we’re doing.”
Gov. Jim Justice, meanwhile, hinted to what he may be doing during his scheduled press briefing Friday with reporters concerning the coronavirus and the Mountain State.
He said he may discuss “ideas regarding lessening of restrictions” on businesses and schools during the coming talk.
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