CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Wyoming County Schools announced Wednesday afternoon remote learning would begin immediately for students at Westside High School after it was learned a staff member at the school had tested positive for COVID-19.
The positive case was reported by the local school board to local residents and state Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Crouch said earlier Wednesday that’s how school reporting should be done.
— Wyoming County Schools (@SchoolsWyoming) September 23, 2020
“It is appropriate for those local boards of health and those local school boards to announce that information,” Crouch said at Gov. Jim Justice’s Wednesday media briefing on the coronavirus.
Crouch was answering a question from a reporter following criticism of Gov. Justice earlier Wednesday in separate statements form the American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia and Justice’s opponent in the November General Election, Democrat Ben Salango.
AFT-WV President Fred Albert said Justice promised to be transparent on Sept. 4 but now no longer announces school cases.
“It’s disturbing that our Governor and state health officials have abandoned transparency in school-related COVID case reporting. While we understand the local health departments are responsible for contract tracing, AFT-WV believes the employer has an ethical and legal obligation to report cases in order to protect the health and safety of students, staff and community at large,” Albert said.
Crouch said the state is collecting the school information but it comes through the local health departments. He said the local level has quicker information on individual cases.
“We have outbreak information for schools but we don’t have those individual cases that a lot of counties are reporting,” Crouch said.
Salango, who has the endorsement of AFT-WV, said in a separate statement that Justice is trying to score political points by manipulating COVID-19 data.
“Justice is putting politics over public safety. His repeated changes to reporting of COVID-19 cases in the state has caused confusion and chaos among West Virginians who rely on the consistent accuracy of these metrics. By deciding not to report accurate data in our schools, he is putting the lives of children, teachers, and school service personnel at risk and that is unacceptable,” Salango said.
State Health Officer Dr. Ayne Amjad said Wednesday nothing has changed about the reporting.
“Those (cases) are reported to the school board, the local health departments, parents are notified, teachers are notified at the local level,” Amjad said. “Those are being aware at the community level and nothing has changed as far as that goes.”
Justice said Wednesday he was going to work on the situation more later Wednesday because he said he understands the concerns.
“I’ll make an extra push on that because I understand the importance,” Justice said. “Surely the importance from the standpoint of parents wanting to know what’s happening at all of the schools.”
The DHHR defined a school outbreak for MetroNews:
“When it comes to schools and universities, the only thing that is being reported right now to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) is an outbreak which is two or more laboratory confirmed cases among staff or students with onsets within a 14-day period, who are epidemiologically linked to the school setting (e.g. same classroom, core group, bus, sports team, meeting, etc.). This shows evidence of transmission rather than single cases that became infected in the community and just happen to work or attend the same school. These outbreaks are handled at the local level through contact tracing by the local health department and then reported to DHHR,” the agency said.
Wednesday marked the second straight day that Wyoming County announced a school closing because of COVID-19. It closed Glen Fork Elementary-Middle School Tuesday for 14 days for cleaning of the building after a positive COVID-19 case.