Kelly Hayes
The Hillsborough County School District has reported 56 cases since Sunday, continuing the upward trend of reported coronavirus cases in the district.
The cases this week consist of 35 students and 21 staff members. Bryant Elementary School reported four student cases on Monday alone.
This mid-week report follows a record-setting week of COVID-19 cases. Last week, spanning Sunday, Oct. 11, through Saturday, Oct. 15, the district reported 128 new cases — 79 students and 49 staff members.
The district also had its highest single day report on Oct. 12. when 41 cases were reported, including 26 students and 15 employees.
High schools have seen the brunt of cases, with Plant High School recording five of those cases on Oct. 12. By the end of the week, the school grew its case load to nine. The high school reported another case on Monday, bringing it to 23 student cases and one staff case since the start of school.
This follows an outbreak in mid-September at Newsome High School, which continues to report the most student cases in a single school across the county. Since its first recorded case on Sept. 13, the school has recorded 26 cases.
In the week prior to last, spanning Oct. 4-10, the county saw 120 cases.
In the week of Sept. 27, Hillsborough County Schools reported 63 cases, meaning the county has nearly doubled its growth in cases.
Since the start of the school year on Aug. 31, the district has seen 638 cases, including 226 employees and 412 students.
Individuals in contact with an individual on campus who tested positive must be quarantined, required to stay home for 14 days.
Students and employees listed in the dashboard since reopening have each been on campus, except for four students listed on the Aug. 31 report who had not on campus because it was the first day of school. The Hillsborough County COVID-19 dashboard updates every 4 hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The Hillsborough County School District has not released the number of individuals required to quarantine since the start of the school year, which compared to neighboring school districts, could be a significant number of students who opted to go back to in-person school.
For reference, Pasco County, which has reported 180 student cases and 70 staff cases since the start of the school year on Aug. 24, has so far had to quarantine 3,426 students and 349 employees. In a report from Sept. 4, Zephyrhills High School quarantined 119 students in one day, all in regard to just one student case.
Pasco County schools recorded nine student cases and two staff cases since Monday. The cases resulted in the quarantine of 162 students and eight staff members.
