Trending
BELMONT -- Union Local Superintendent Ben Porter has confirmed a Union Local Middle School staff member has tested positive Thursday for the COVID-19 coronavirus.
“We became aware of it this afternoon,” he said.
He could not say if the staff member was a teacher. “It does involve a staff person.”
Porter said contact tracing was ongoing to determine if any students or staff need to go into quarantine. He is confident that few to no quarantines will be needed.
“We talked to our staff members, but really we feel like we’ve done a very good job of social distancing and mask-wearing,” he said. “We feel like we’re social distancing appropriately. We don’t believe at this time we have any students who have been in contact.”
“As a precaution we have asked the staff ... members that may have eaten lunch together, to not have them at school. We didn’t have them there today and won’t have them there tomorrow,” he said. “We have not identified anybody at this point and time that may need to quarantine.”
Porter added Union Local was still operating in hybrid attendance, with only 50 percent of students attending at a given time, making it simpler to isolate and identify possible contacts. He said school continued to operate Thursday and would be held again today. Porter said full attendance will begin next week.
“The situation has been handled well. We’ve done everything we need to do at this point and time. Right now we’re working with the health department and we’ll continue to do that and go from there.”
There are 340 students at the middle school, with half in daily attendance. Of the close to 1,500 students in the school district, Porter said about 10 percent -- or 175 students -- have opted to learn online, a slight increase from normal year’s school.
This after Belmont County Deputy Health Director Robert Sproul earlier reported more positive news, marking another day with no increases in new coronavirus cases. As of Thursday the official numbers remained the same, with a total of 747 positive and 676 recoveries with 41 people isolated.
Sproul said the Union Local staff member is a Guernsey County resident and will not impact Belmont County’s numbers. There had been no new cases for several days, despite the reopening of the school year and a student at Leona Middle School in Shadyside testing positive last week. A free pop-up testing site will be held 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Ohio University Eastern.