School has been in session for a little more than a month and COVID-19 cases have cropped up almost every day. The vaccine for children under 12 years old is still weeks away at best.

“We are educators by trade. Essentially now, we’re health care workers, contact tracers and health care educators,” said Superintendent John Rushefski, Jim Thorpe Area School District. “It’s similar to a medic on a battlefield. We’ve been very busy, very busy this year.”

Jim Thorpe Area School District has had 55 confirmed cases out of 102 possible cases involving both students and staff. As a result, 177 students and staff have had to quarantine, including an entire second-grade class at Lawrence B. Morris School and a fourth-grade class at the Penn-Kidder Campus, Rushef­ski said.

“It’s been overwhelming,” he said.

Fortunately, all of the cases of COVID in the children have been mild, Rushefski said.

Pleasant Valley School District’s Acting Superintendent Charlene Brennan said, “With a focus just on the Pleasant Valley community and our own schools, I am concerned about the rising number of positive cases and those in school needing to be quarantined,” she said.

By the numbers

According to the state Department of Health’s COVID-19 Early Warning Monitoring System Dashboard, case counts began to go up in mid-September. Some areas have seen the numbers begin to level off, while others are still increasing.

Carbon County continues to increase with 251 cases during the week of Sept. 19 to 25, compared to 242 the prior week. Schuylkill County also continues to rise with 377 cases last week, compared to 348 cases the prior week.

Case numbers dropped slightly for Monroe, Lehigh and Northampton counties last week. Monroe had 463 cases, down from 504 cases the prior week. Lehigh was 747 cases, down from 787, and Northampton was 709 cases, down from 779.

In order to effectively compare the five counties, converting the data to cases per 100,000 people gives a common denominator. The data reveals that Carbon County has the highest spread of the virus at 391.1 cases per 100,000 people.

Monroe County is second with 271.9 cases. Schuylkill is third with 266.7 cases. Northampton is 232.2 cases, and Lehigh is 202.3 case per 100,000 people.

The DOH considers high transmission of the virus in a population as greater than or equal to 100 cases in a 7 day period in 100,000 population.

Between Aug. 30 and Sept. 23, Pleasant Valley had 83 positive cases and 369 students in quarantine at home, Brennan said. The district has had three of its four school buildings with more than 1% of its students testing positive for COVID-19 in one week.

Careful watch

“At 5%, the DOH recommendation is that the school closes for 14 days. I don’t want to close schools, so I’m watching the numbers carefully,” Brennan said. “Some schools are starting to close at our numbers for a day to three days, just to sanitize in the hopes of preventing longer closure.”

The percentage numbers at Northern Lehigh School District are higher than Pleasant Valley’s due to its number of cases in a smaller student population.

According to NLSD’s COVID tracker, there have been 79 confirmed COVID cases in students in all four school buildings. This is a 5.2% cumulative percentage of students testing positive.

The highest percentage of students with COVID was in the high school at 7.1%, followed by Slatington Elementary School at 5.52%. The middle school was third at 4.51% and Peters Elementary School was the least at 2.49%.

There have been seven staff members who have tested positive and one bus driver. With the staff included, the cumulative percentage dropped to 2.71%.

“All areas of our schools, administration building, and field house have bionic-polarization devices installed in each HVAC unit,” said Superintendent Matthew Link, about the district’s efforts to reduce transmission levels. “We use Halo disinfecting machines at night in areas where positive or suspected positive people have been during the day.”

The Tamaqua Area School District reported 38 confirmed COVID-19 cases between Aug. 31 and Sept. 27 on its website’s tracker. An additional 249 people have had to quarantine.

“(Social) distancing is more difficult with a significant number of students in the building,” said Superintendent Raymond Kinder. “The district encourages hand washing/sanitation, distancing and other mitigation methods as much as possible.”

Vaccinations

Vaccinations are the answer, according to Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam.

“We know that vaccinations are one of the best ways to prevent illness due to COVID-19 and help keep students learning in-person. That’s why we encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated and we encourage schools to help make it as convenient as possible,” she said Thursday.

“It’s not too early to schedule a vaccine clinic in November in anticipation of federal approval for kids between 5 and 11.”

For eligible adolescents in Pennsylvania, 21.9 percent of children ages 12-14 are fully vaccinated and 42.6 percent of children ages 15-19 are fully vaccinated.

Pleasant Valley’s acting Superintendent Brennan said the community transmission numbers are much higher than they expected.

“Every person testing positive has the potential to pass the virus on to multiple people, and that is a huge concern,” she said. “My promise has always been, even when we were optional masking, that we would start the school year and watch our own Pleasant Valley data and statistics for the community and our schools, and we are doing that. The data right now is of concern.”