The district has decided to move to a weekly report of positive covid cases at school.  Reporting covid cased at school can be very complicated and sometimes misleading because of the nature of testing and the timing of reporting.  For example, the district had someone that is normally in the school building test positive on Monday (the person did not come to school on Monday per waiting on test results) of this week. The individual started having symptoms on Sunday.  In that situation, the district had to go back 48 hours from the start of symptoms to contact trace for close contacts.  That person was not in the school on Friday so the district did not need to do any contact tracing because no one was potentially exposed to that person during the “exposure period” as described by CDC Guidelines. 

The other challenge with reporting is that oftentimes the district is contact tracing in one week from an individual that had been in the building the week prior.  For example, the school may be notified on a Monday of a positive individual.  The individual had started symptoms on Friday of the previous week.  The district must then go back and contract trace from the Wednesday and Thursday of the prior week (48 hours from the start of symptoms). 

This new weekly report is meant to provide more accurate information to the public about the on-going cases in the school district.  The first two lines represent individuals that were confirmed positive to the school (the school was notified this week they were positive) and were in the building the prior week during their “exposure period (48 hours prior to symptoms)”, which caused the district to contact trace at school.  The last two lines represent individuals that were confirmed positive to the school (the school was notified this week they were positive) and were in the building this week during their “exposure period”, which caused the district to contact trace at school.

Here is the data for the week of 11/9 – 11/13:

Situation

# of Cases

Number of positive individuals that were in Arcola Elementary School the prior week that led to contact tracing.

2

Number of positive individuals that were in Arcola Junior/Senior High School the prior week that led to contact tracing.

0

Number of positive individuals in Arcola Elementary School this week that led to contact tracing.

1

Number of positive individuals in Arcola Junior/Senior High School this week that led to contact tracing.

1