As promised, the Hall County School District has released a weekly count of COVID cases among students and staff at the 35 schools in the district.
Superintendent Will Schofield released a video on the district website to discuss the 90 cases that surfaced during the first week of the new school year.
Schofield said school officials are conducting contact tracing to determine where the infections are coming from, and officials have been able to determine where some of the higher numbers have originated.
For example, one high school had seven positive cases this week.
"That school that had seven, six of those students have a connection, and that is that they've been off at band camp together and spent incredible numbers of hours together with students and that's how the virus was passed," Schofield said.
Schofield said case numbers will be released on a weekly basis - every Friday morning - rather than a daily basis this school year.
"We spent 19 months answering multiple questions almost every day [when we updated numbers daily] and unless you know the nuance and the stories behind that data don't make a lot of sense," Schofield said. "So, we will continue to post our data weekly."
For now, masking at Hall County schools is optional, but Schofield said if case numbers spike, that may change.
"We are in a position to almost immediately require an individual school to mask up, to add additional mitigating practices until we can get those numbers back down," Schofield said.
Follow this link to see Will Schofield's video statement.
Numbers by school level at 9 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 12:
- Elementary Schools: 29 positive students, 16 positive staff members, with a range of zero cases at some schools and the highest having five cases. Of the five cases at one school, four were unrelated and one has not been to school.
- Middle Schools: 14 positive students, 2 positive staff members, with a range of zero cases at some schools and the highest having four cases.
- High Schools: 21 positive students, 8 positive team members, with a range of zero cases at some schools and the highest having seven cases.
