by Carol J. Bova
As the COVID-19 epidemic regains momentum this fall, the virus has crept into a few public schools in Virginia. Seven of ten outbreaks in progress are in the Southwest Region where there is significant current and rising community spread. The other three in the Central and Eastern regions where several September school outbreaks have now ended.
The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) Outbreaks report shows 43 outbreaks in public K-12 schools, with 227 cases, as of Nov. 6.
The K-12 School Dashboard lists 35 as of October 30th, with October 23 as the most recent date VDH was notified. The total case number for those 35 isn’t known because cases in the two-to-four range are suppressed, showing an asterisk instead. Unfortunately, suppressing those small numbers makes it impossible to see exactly how many cases are involved with the eight new outbreaks and how the number might have increased or decreased since the previous report.
For what the data is worth, here is the list of schools with outbreaks in today’s report, as of October 30th, showing whether they are “in progress,” “closed,” or “pending closure” in the official system.
Carol J. Bova is a writer living in Mathews County.
