Colfax school board Back-to-School plan: things might be looking up
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
COLFAX — As of the day of the Colfax Board of Education’s February 14 meeting, there were zero active cases of COVID-19 in the school district.
There has been a significant decrease in cases in recent weeks, said William C. Yingst Jr., district administrator.
The numbers are down, and during the weekly meetings with medical doctors and the Dunn County Health Department, it has been reported that more Intensive Care Unit beds are available because there are fewer COVID patients, he said.
Yingst said he was going to recommend that the school district scale back on quarantines.
The public health department is no longer contact tracing, although Wisconsin is still considered to have a high transmission rate of the coronavirus, he said.
While the numbers in the state are still considered to be high, they are decreasing “and we are on track to start scaling back,” Yingst said.
At the peak of the Omicron surge in January, Wisconsin reported 19,000 cases of COVID-19 in one day, and Dunn County experienced a correspondingly high number of cases as well.
In December of 2020, the highest number of daily cases reported in Wisconsin was 8,000.
Because there were so many cases of the Omicron variant, the Dunn County Health Department was overwhelmed and could no longer keep up with contact tracing.
At the time, KT Gallagher, director of the Dunn County Health Department, said she and her staff were relying on the school districts to do their own contact tracing.
The state Department of Health Services also is no longer expecting local health departments to do contact tracing because officials believe the time of local health officials could now be better spent in promoting mitigation efforts, such as vaccinations for SARS-CoV-2, and on educational campaigns.
Various health experts say they are concerned about SARS-CoV-2 because the virus has a history of mutating, and that while the Omicron variant surge is subsiding, the virus could mutate again.
The Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 is much more transmissible that the original virus, and Omicron is much more transmissible than the Delta variant.
As of February 18, the United States was still recording 2,000 deaths per day from COVID-19.
Testing
If students in the Colfax school district test positive for COVID-19, they will be out of school for five days, Yingst told the Board of Education.
If students do not have any symptoms of the disease, then it is okay for them to be in school, he said.
But if students have symptoms, they will be expected to stay home, Yingst noted.
The Back-to-School plan approved by the school board has solved problems all along the way during the pandemic, he said.
“I feel like we are turning a corner,” Yingst said, adding, “We are in a better place now.”
Yingst said he is reviewing the information in the Back-to-School plan and that he will soon issue a letter to families in the school district about scaling back on quarantine but that if students test positive, they should stay home.
Jodi Kiekhafer, school board member, asked about the availability of testing for COVID-19.
The antigen tests are now becoming available, and there have been only a few PCR tests done in the last week, Yingst said.
