S.C. department: 'Schools are doing well' with preventing spread of virus

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The state Department of Education says schools are doing a better job than communities overall at mitigating the coronavirus.

In the nearly two months since the state began reporting all schools' confirmed COVID-19 cases, there have been close to 2,000 cases among students and employees participating in school or activities in person. In the same timeframe, the state's total number of confirmed cases is close to 40,000 as the virus is rising again.

Ryan Brown, chief communications officer with the S.C. Department of Education, spoke last week and also Wednesday to The Sumter Item about all schools' COVID-19 cases as reported by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control since Sept. 4.

In that timeframe, there have been 1,956 school-level positive cases across both public and private schools in the state reported by DHEC. The total includes students, teachers and other school employees.

However, the total number of confirmed cases in South Carolina since Sept. 4 is 39,934 among all state residents, according to the agency.

In breaking down the totals, that means 4.9% of all cases in the state in the timeframe have been from the schools' population of students and employees. K-12 students, teachers and staff total about 20% of the state's total population; roughly 1 million of the Palmetto State's 5 million residents are directly affiliated with K-12 education.

"Schools account for one-fifth of the entire state's population, but they only account for a small percentage of the entire case count," Brown said. "In that respect, schools are doing well. They are places where all the key mitigation and prevention strategies are being practiced.

"When you look at it in the greater context of the state, it does show that, given the circumstances, schools are doing a better job than the communities as a whole at containing and mitigating the virus."

For schools to continue to keep their relative percentages lower, current safety measures will need to be continued, he added.

According to Brown and DHEC, fully virtual students learning from home but who come to school for sports or extracurricular activities are included in DHEC's case totals if they test positive. Students and staff who are learning or teaching virtually and who do not step foot on a campus are not considered in the numbers.

The case numbers show how many students and employees who attend or work at a school have tested positive, but that doesn't mean the infected person contracted COVID-19 at the school.

DHEC's totals do not include how many students or faculty have recovered from the virus or how many cases are still "active," according to officials.

Locally, from Sept. 16-23, Sumter School District had nine confirmed cases at six schools, according to spokeswoman Shelly Galloway. As of the end of last week, the district had recorded about 50 cases split between students and employees.

When a person from a school tests positive, she said, the district works in conjunction with DHEC. Standard protocol is for the school's nurse to conduct contact tracing, and anyone who has been in close contact with the COVID-19 positive individual during the time he or she was contagious must be excluded from school, or quarantine, for 14 days after the last contact.

Parents of any student who is determined to have had close contact with someone who is COVID-19 positive are notified by school personnel through a phone call and/or email, according to protocol, though there has been debate from some parents as to whether they were properly contacted after their child was exposed.

The entire district began in a fully virtual capacity with instruction on Aug. 28. Phase 1 of hybrid instruction, which allows students to be in a classroom two days a week, began on Sept. 28 for all English language learners and students who receive special education services in all grades. Next, pre-K, kindergarten and first-grade students began hybrid on Oct. 1.

Phase 2 of hybrid instruction began Monday, and phases 3 and 4 are tentatively scheduled to begin in November. Parents do have the option for their children to remain in virtual instruction for the entire semester, according to the district.