Lucky, or unlucky?
Depends on your perspective, Eddie Campbell Jr. said Wednesday.
The superintendent of Monongalia County’s school district spent part of St. Patrick’s Day addressing another case of COVID-19 in the system.
After a Mountaineer Middle student presented with a positive diagnosis, a teacher at the school atop Price Street was put into quarantine as a precaution.
Fifteen classmates, plus another five who were in close proximity during a bus ride, are also isolating today, Campbell said.
The “lucky” part of the equation, the superintendent said, comes from the fact that another outbreak in another building was quelled – due to in-house contact tracing.
By that afternoon, Mountaineer Middle had already been thoroughly disinfected by a trained COVID cleaning crew – made up of district employees who are specially outfitted and receive additional pay for their critical work.
The unlucky shadow on the shamrock is the coronavirus itself, which continues to kill and cause angst in West Virginia, while people sort through the registration process for their vaccines.
As of St. Patrick’s Day, COVID has claimed 2,565 West Virginia lives, the state Department of Health and Human Resources said, with 19 victims noted over the past 24 hours.
But in a state with 1.7 million, 396,970 residents have received first doses of the vaccine, joining 247,203 who are now fully inoculated, the DHHR reports.
Another round of the Moderna vaccine, in fact, will go into the arms of more district teachers and other staffers (first-time doses) at Morgantown High School on Friday morning.
While smatterings of COVID cases persist in the school district – with quarantine roll calls that add up – Campbell said that, too, can be a matter of perspective.
Monongalia County Schools finished last week with eight students and two staffers testing positive for the coronavirus, he said.
Resulting quarantines caught an additional 132 students and five staffers for safety, he continued.
To date, though, the superintendent reiterated, not one COVID case in the district has come from an outbreak in a school building.
And last week’s cases alone, are relative to a school district that would have had nearly 12,000 students in classroom seats this year, were it not for reduced attendance numbers due to pandemic.
Roughly 70% of the county’s students are back for in-person, five-day-a-week instruction, after the state Board of Education overruled most local boards – Mon’s, included – for the mandated return.
If you’re a student or employee of the school district, Campbell said, and you get put into quarantine because of COVID, be prepared for the full, 14-day duration.
That period was set at the direction of Dr. Lee B. Smith, the county’s health officer, Campbell said.
“That’s on the high end,” Campbell said.
“And a lot of our parents can get frustrated. We all want our kids in school. We all want our kids playing sports. But this is for everyone’s safety.”
In the Mountain State, COVID-19 is marking its anniversary week, of sorts.
On Friday the 13th last March, Gov. Jim Justice ordered all West Virginia schools shuttered, as coronavirus cases were hitting in neighboring Pennsylvania, Ohio and Maryland.
The closure was originally expected to last a couple of weeks or so, until things settled down.
TWEET@DominionPostWV
