Does is seem like everyone you know has been — or is — sick again with COVID? Well, we are indeed experiencing an uptick in cases, according to recent news reports and EBMUD wastewater tracking data.
Even if the old ways of tracking the virus are no longer in play, the clear rise of SARS-CoV-2 is evident in EBMUD wastewater via the chart below, pulled from the WastewaterSCAN dashboard.
WastewaterSCAN is “a national effort to spread monitoring of diseases through municipal wastewater systems to inform public health responses locally and nationally.” According to the organization’s website, it’s a partnership between Stanford, Emory, the National League of Cities, the Coalition for Aligning Science, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
You can view Oakland data HERE and even search by variant or different municipalities across the country.
PUSD retires COVID dashboard; outlines health and safety precautions
Some small school districts in Kentucky and Texas have cancelled in-person class due to a surge of illness, including COVID, according to national news reports this week. PUSD has retired its COVID dashboard and no longer posts how many students and staff are out every week due to COVID. It also stopped routine notification of school-based exposures to COVID-19 last spring.
In her back-to-school email to families in August, Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Hawn said PUSD is still taking health and safety precautions linked HERE according to guidance from the Alameda County Public Health Department.
According to PUSD, families should report COVID-related illnesses to the schools and take the following precautions:
- When COVID-19 symptoms are not present, or are mild and improving, and the student has been fever-free for 24 hours (without the use of medication), the student may return to school on Day 6 following symptom onset without being required to provide a negative COVID-19 test.
- Students must continue to mask around others for the full 10-day isolation period — unless they test negative on two consecutive days at least 24 hours apart.
- Students testing positive for COVID-19 must still isolate at home for five days from the onset of symptoms (the first day of symptoms is day 0), or after a positive COVID-19 test if symptoms are not present.
- Whenever a fever is present, the student cannot return to school until 24 hours after the fever resolves (without the use of fever-reducing medication). If symptoms, other than fever, are not improving, continue to isolate until symptoms improve, or after day 10.