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The number of COVID-19 cases in the Palo Alto Unified School District continues to drop substantially as the omicron wave subsides, although infection rates are still above what was seen last semester.
Last week, 38 students and four staff members tested positive, according to the district’s online data dashboard. That’s down dramatically from a peak of 227 students and 41 staff members who tested positive during the second week of January.
The district updates its COVID-19 case data on Tuesdays for the prior week.
Since the high point in January, COVID-19 cases in local schools have been consistently declining each week. That’s in line with what’s been seen more broadly, with cases in Santa Clara County also plummeting.
“Our Covid reporting numbers have dramatically declined since January 1,” Superintendent Don Austin wrote in a Feb. 9 public letter. “In general, Palo Alto has some of the lowest cumulative case rates in the county and state.”
Despite conditions improving, more cases were still recorded last week in Palo Alto schools than in any seven-day period the previous semester. Before the omicron variant took hold, the district saw at most 11 students test positive in a single week this school year, according to the online dashboard.
With cases dropping, California has lifted its indoor mask requirement in most settings for those who are vaccinated, but continues to require masking at K-12 schools. Santa Clara County has kept its mask order in place for the time being.
As for wearing masks outdoors, Palo Alto Unified dropped its own outside face covering requirement earlier this month.
The district also dropped its vaccination requirement for parent volunteers this week, instead deciding to require that they wear masks both inside and outside while on campus.
The decline in cases has also led the district to resume sending notification letters to families when their student comes into contact with a positive case. That practice had been dropped last month because case rates were so high that district staff said sending individualized notifications was logistically impossible and of little value with such widespread infection rates.
Does any know if the PAUSD case number on the dashboard reflect children who tested positive at home and then are absent from school? Or, are the numbers only reflective of the positives from tests performed at the schools?
I believe it is in between those two cases. Some parents notify the school why a child is out sick, and others do not. Also, I’m not sure if they count children who were never at school during their presumed infectious period (for example, if a child gets ill while out on break).
I regard the school dashboard as a useful indicator of trends, but not ground truth. In my opinion, the best indicators we have are: (a) the country sewage COVID dashboard; and (b) just observing that clusters of cases in schools tend to be small and not growing, which tells me measures to avoid in school spread are largely working well.
Let’s return to normal life. Stop living in fear. More importantly, stop making our kids live in fear.