NCSD Sees Decrease in Quarantines, Increase in Cases
The Natrona County School District (NCSD) released COVID-19 data for their schools from Sept. 25 to Oct. 8, and while more students and staff have reported getting the virus, less have needed to be quarantined.
As part of their bi-weekly COVID-19 reporting dashboard, 156 students, and 32 staff, have reported cases of COVID-19, compared with 153 cases among students and 29 among staff from Sept. 11 to Sept 24, while 393 students, and 28 staff, have quarantined from Sept. 25 to Oct. 8, compared to 540 students and 34 staff the two weeks prior.
The largest number of cases came from Kelly Walsh High School, where 56 cases were reported among students, up from 28 from Sept. 11 to 24, with second place going to Natrona County High School, which saw a slight decrease down to 26 in student cases between Sept. 25 and Oct. 8, from 29 in the previous two weeks.
Tanya Southerland, director of public relations for the NCSD, said she does not have information on any specific cases when asked about Kelly Walsh High School.
Meanwhile, Hailey Bloom, public information officer for the Casper-Natrona County Health Department, said they do not have enough staff to be able to track cases that may have come from the school district.
The number of cases this week however still represents a small fraction of the total student and staff population, as there are 12,900 students in the district and almost 1,000 full time equivalent staff members.
This means just over 1% of students and about 3% of staff were reported infected with COVID-19, which is separate from the number of students and staff that reported contracting COVID-19 in the previous data sets.
That makes it unclear if any of the previous COVID-19 cases are still active, as the district does not list when any particular case tested positive, and while most people are able to fully recover after contracting the virus, some people experience symptoms weeks or months afterwards.
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