An Update on COVID-19
An Update on COVID-19
By MUHAMMED KHAN
A lot has been going on recently in regards to Covid-19. There have been many changes to the policies due to new developments,
On Monday, Jan. 10, students were no longer required to wear a mask to school. However, just two days later, the mask mandate was put back in place. This was due to concerns about the further spread of Covid-19, including the Omicron variant. Furthermore, the superintendent strongly urged people to wear KN95 or N95 masks rather than cloth masks because they are the most effective in mitigating the spread of Omicron. On Jan. 18, the Oxford City Council reinstated the Face Mask Ordinance. It will remain in place until Mar. 1.
Talawanda Middle School was closed from January 12-14. They had one day of asynchronous learning and had to attend classes through Zoom for the remaining two days. The entire school district closed recently on Jan. 20 and 21. These two days were calamity days, so there were no assignments or online learning (they were essentially snow days). These closures show how the cases have had a great impact on the entire district.
Recently, the district stopped displaying a COVID chart on their website. So, we can no longer see the current cases on that site. This has made it relatively difficult for students and parents to tell what the situation is and what the future may look like. However, the Butler County Department of Health releases epidemiology reports, the most recent of which was released on Jan. 21. The information can be found at the following link: http://health.bcohio.us/our_services/novel_coronavirus.php.
The data in the recent report is based on cases on Jan. 14-15. The main data is shown below:
As shown in the table above, the number of cases reported for Oxford, Ohio was 5,159 (230 new cases from 1/09-1/15). The full report can be found at the following link: http://health.bcohio.us/CovidReportButlerCounty%201.15.22.pdf
The CDC also has its own tracker for COVID cases. It is updated more frequently. As of Jan. 24, the number of new reported cases in Butler County from the last 7 days was 5,641. The tracker can be found at the following link: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view?list_select_state=Ohio&data-type=Risk&list_select_county=39017
Policies are still, for the most part, the same. For new developments at the Talawanda School District, you can visit their website (https://www.talawanda.org/) and look under the district news section. This includes all major developments of the COVID-19 policies. At this point, it is hard to tell what changes are coming.
