Virus cases declining as students quarantined

Seventy-one Hart County students are quarantined due to possible exposure to COVID-19, school officials report, as the number of infections locally appears to be declining.
Hart County Charter System Superintendent Jay Floyd reported at Monday night’s regular board of education meeting that one student out of 3,557 students in the system has a current positive COVID-19 status. Five students were positive for the virus last week, but Floyd said all of those students were virtual learners.
“We haven’t had an outbreak, so to speak, in the school yet,” Floyd said. “I’m not saying that that’s not going to occur. I think we are getting close to a point where we’re going to peak and we could possibly level out.”
While the number of students with the virus declined this week, the number of students quarantined due to possible exposure ballooned to 71 from 14 reported last week.
“When you get staff members that end up being positive, you could have multiple students that need to be quarantined just for safety purposes that they could have been a possible exposure, not that they were exposed,” Floyd said. “Sometimes it’s a little easier, or it’s a little better on everybody to quarantine the whole class.”
Floyd said the majority of the quarantines have come from homes where the parent or grandparent tested positive for the virus.
Five employees in the school system are currently listed as having the virus, while five more employees have been quarantined for possible exposure.
“I think so far everything has really been a lot better than what we anticipated,” Floyd said. “... I think we feel pretty confident on the techniques we’re using, the things we’re doing, the monitoring we’re doing.”
Floyd urged parents not to send students to school if they have symptoms of any kind.
The number of COVID-19 infections locally appears to be declining, according to data from the Department of Public Health.
There have been 50 new coronavirus cases added in the last two weeks in Hart County, according to the DPH as of Tuesday, which is down from last week’s report of 55 cases being added in the previous two weeks.
Hart County administrator Terrell Partain said that as of Wednesday morning, there were 12 active cases in Hart County.
Cumulatively as of Friday morning, 476 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Hart County since the DPH began tracking the data and 12 deaths have been reported.
Statewide, more than 300,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and 6,474 deaths are reportedly related to the virus.