COVID didn’t take any snow days last week in Monongalia County schools.
The district ended the weather-shortened week with 116 positive cases among students. Another 281 classmates sat out in quarantine as a precaution.
Add that to the 39 staffers who presented with positive diagnoses – to go with their 52 co-workers who also quarantined, just to be safe.
The virus was present in every school last week.
Cases ranged from the 46 students who came down with COVID at Morgantown High to a lone student infected at Mountainview Elementary.
For Eddie Campbell Jr., Mon’s superintendent of schools, those numbers aren’t so much elevated, as they are on schedule.
“We knew we were going to see an uptick in cases after the holidays and all the gatherings,” he said.
“Uptick,” was the word, both in the Mon County school district and across the Mountain State in general.
To date, 5,445 West Virginians have died of COVID and its complications, the state Department of Health and Human Resources said.
That includes the 24 who succumbed to the contagion over the weekend, including a 32-year-old Ohio County woman, the youngest of the victims.
Of the state’s current 2,289 active cases, 1,117 of those are in Mon.
Due to technical difficulties on its website, the DHHR was unable to present its County Alert Map on Monday.
Last Friday’s map, though, showed 39 of the state’s 55 counties, including Monongalia and Preston sitting in red.
In Mon school buildings, masks are continuing to be enforced while all the other pandemic protocols in place, given the infection rates for now.
Deputy schools superintendent Donna Talerico said previously plans were being made to administer booster shots to students 12-15, now that the newest vaccine has been approved.
The omicron variant of the virus continues to roil, both clinically and bureaucratically.
In Massachusetts last week, it was reported that around 39,000 students and more than 12,000 staffers had tested positive, and officials in response made masks mandatory through Feb. 28 at least.
Monday, students in Chicago city schools had another day off as teachers continued their legal grapple with district leadership.
Teachers there want to be able to exercise a remote-learning option in times of upsurges, a measure of which the school district has yet to agree.
Rolling up sleeves for boosters and wearing masks on the school bus and in the classrooms are all part of the march to “normal” – the pandemic version of it – Campbell and Talerico said.
The return to school after Christmas also heralds the fact that the 2021-22 academic year is now half over. Mon’s three public high schools are set to graduate their seniors in May, pandemic-permitting.
University High and Morgantown High’s commencement exercises are May 27 and May 28, respectively.
Clay Battelle will send forth its seniors May 29.
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