The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) announced they will begin providing twice-weekly reports on the number COVID-19 cases associated with staff and students at public and private schools in the state.
This school reporting will include for every school both cumulative and rolling 30-day counts of confirmed cases among students, teachers and faculty members, and will be updated on DHEC’s COVID-19 webpage on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. The first reports will be available this Friday, Sep. 4.
Key points about this new data include:
The reporting does not mean that students, faculty or staff contracted the virus at school
Unlike a nursing home, where residents live at the facility, students, teachers and faculty come and go from school and are active in their community and could come into contact with the virus outside of a school setting.
The reporting will include kindergarten through 12th grade students in private and public schools
At this time, college students will not be captured in these reports, although several colleges and universities are choosing to announce cases on their websites. Students residing in South Carolina to go to school are included in South Carolina’s daily numbers, reported out by county based on current address.
Only those individuals who physically attend school on a regular basis will be included in the counts
Sports coaches, tutors, part-time employees, kitchen staff, custodial and maintenance workers and other school employees with a physical presence in schools will be included in these reports. Those students who participate in virtual instruction but are on campus regularly for extracurricular activities will also be included.
Some schools may choose to self-announce cases before they are reflected in DHEC’s twice-weekly reports
There may be in a delay in what cases are included in DHEC’s online reporting, as the agency works to receive the information, review it and confirm it before presenting it online
To view the school cases lists, which will first be available this Friday, visit scdhec.gov/COVID19schools.
