SPOKANE, Wash. – According to the COVID-19 dashboard, as of January 6, Spokane Public Schools has 58 confirmed cases, 76 exposures, and more than 400 in quarantine. Although it is an increase in cases from the end of December, it’s about half of what we saw within SPS at the start of November.
Other schools in the area are seeing a bit of an uptick in cases as well, in the Mead School District pretty much every school has at least one positive case. Mead high school alone has 70 cases among students.
Central Valley Schools have similar numbers. Nearly every school has at least one positive case, the most by a school in that district: 25 at University High School.
“We have seen a pretty substantial uptick in cases, and a lot of it is when we talk to the health district about it. There are a couple factors that contribute to that,” said Brian Asmus, Director of School Safety and Security. “One is that the new variant is very contagious, and there have been several breakthrough cases. The second piece of that is we are just one week back from winter break.”
Asmus added he believes they will see a decline in cases in the next couple of weeks.
For parents, there are updated guidelines from the Washington State Department of Health. One of those updates has to do with how long your child will have to isolate if they test positive for the virus, see below:
“Any student or staff member with COVID-19 should isolate at home. This isolation guidance applies regardless of vaccination status.
If a student or staff member tests positive for SARS-CoV-2 by a molecular or antigen test, they can return to school when the following criteria are met:
5 days* have passed since symptom onset, or since positive test specimen collection date if no symptoms are present (*note: people who are severely ill or severely immunocompromised may need to isolate for up to 20 days); ANDNo symptoms are present, or symptoms are resolving; ANDNo fever within the past 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medications.
Students and staff should continue monitoring for symptoms and wearing a well-fitting mask around others through day 10 (days 6-10) both in and out of school, including during extracurricular and sports activities.”
