Last week’s COVID report from Monongalia County schools has some pandemic sticker-shock attached to it, Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said.
Said shock, because 359 students presented with positive diagnoses, he said. So did 59 staffers.
And another 440 students, plus 60 more employees, ended the week on quarantine.
“When you look at it across the district, the percentage rates of infection are really low,” he said.
In a district with around 12,000 students, 359 with COVID still means less than 3 percent, the superintendent said.
“The numbers have increased,” he said. “We anticipated it. We knew after the holidays we were going to see the spikes. That’s just how omicron behaves.”
What is being seen in Mon schools is no different than the rest of West Virginia.
Right now there are 15,687 active cases across 55 counties, the state Department of Health and Human Resources reported Thursday.
Deaths are up to 5,590 thus far.
Others are ill enough to be hospitalized. A total 952 people are in hospital beds right now, the DHHR said. Of that, 216 are in intensive care and 131 are on ventilators. Twelve are pediatric patients – with one them being treated in the ICU.
In Mon schools, in the meantime, Campbell said, masking and other protocols will continue to be prescribed, for as long as necessary.
The district is also planning in-school vaccination clinics, tentatively set for mid-February, when booster shots will go into the arms of students ages 12 to 18.
“This is why we’ve been able to keep our doors open,” the superintendent said.
Cold and snow this week has kept the doors closed, though. Most of the week has been given over the snow days since the weather has taken a seasonal turn.
Meteorologists were calling for a low of 7 across the region Thursday evening, in fact.
“The temperatures are what we’re dealing with now,” Campbell said.
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