Coronavirus: 5 Clark County school districts, 2 Champaign report cases

Credit: Bill Lackey

Credit: Bill Lackey

Five Clark County, and two Champaign County, school districts reported new cases of COVID-19 this week, according to the Ohio Department of Health’s COVID-19 school district dashboard.

In total, 26 student and staff cases were reported between the two counties, coming in shy of last week’s 29 case total.

Clark-Shawnee Local School, Greenon Local Schol District, Northeastern Local Schools, Springfield City School District, Tecumseh Local School District, Graham Local School District and West Liberty-Salem Local Schools all reported new cases.

Clark-Shawnee reported two students and one staff case; Greenon reported two students and one staff case; Northeastern reported seven student cases; Springfield reported five students and two staff cases; Tecumseh reported two student cases; Graham reported two students and one staff case and West Liberty reported one student case.

Cases reported on the dashboard lag one week, meaning cases reported on Thursday were from the week of Oct. 12- Oct. 19.

The dashboard is the result of an ODH order requiring schools to report cases to their health department within 24 hours of learning of them. Gov. Mike DeWine unveiled the dashboard on Sept. 17.

The dashboard tracks cases of COVID-19 in all public and private K-12 schools across the state. Data displayed on the board includes all student and staff cases broken into two categories: new and cumulative. The board is updated each Thursday.

DeWine announced Thursday that the state is looking to study coronavirus spread in schools after initial information indicates there isn’t much direct spread in the classroom.

With the consent of the school and parents, the state will have students who qualify as a close contact of someone who tested positive for the virus take quick tests so they can continue to remain in the classroom. The study will also test students who have been exposed to the virus and compare the results to those who were exposed.

“We’re going to see what kind of numbers we see,” DeWine said. “Anecdotally, which is all we have now, we are just not seeing a lot of spread directly in the classroom.”

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