Allamakee County reports most COVID-19 cases this past week since early July
Allamakee County experienced its highest weekly confirmed case total of COVID-19 reported by the State of Iowa since early July this past week, as eight new cases were reported within the past week to raise the county total to 163 cases as of Monday, August 17. For the typical Tuesday-Monday timeframe reported each week in The Standard, those eight cases are second only to 10 cases reported for Allamakee County by the State of Iowa in the first full week in July in looking back over the past three months.
This past week’s eight cases include the first three-day stretch of reported multiple daily cases since the end of April, as three consecutive days this past week, Thursday-Saturday, August 13-15, each had two cases reported. A fourth consecutive day with a positive case, Sunday, August 16, saw one case reported, with the past week starting with another single case reported Tuesday, August 11.
STATE GUIDELINES FOR IN-SCHOOL CLASSES
As the 2020-2021 school year gets set to begin locally next week, guidelines introduced by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, State of Iowa epidemiologist Dr. Caitlin Pedati, and State of Iowa education department director Ann Lebo at a July 30 press conference will begin to be implemented to help determine whether a school district can convert its learning to full-time online. Those guidelines say that only school districts in Iowa counties where the two-week average of positive new coronavirus tests is at least 15% will be allowed to operate completely online.
The formula for calculating that two-week positivity average involves taking the sum total of Individual Positive Cases for a county’s most recent 14-day period and dividing it by the sum total of total individuals tested for that same 14-day period. As of Monday, August 17, four counties in Iowa - Humboldt (24%) and Wright (19%) in north central Iowa, Lucas (17.1%) in south central Iowa, and Clinton (15.9%) in far eastern Iowa are over that 15% threshold that would allow a total of 26 Iowa school districts in those counties to not hold classes in person for up to a two-week period.
Only once a county surpasses a positivity rate of 15% will a district in that county be allowed to petition the state education and public health departments for a two-week waiver to conduct 100% online or remote learning. Those two-week waivers must be renewed to continue.
Districts in counties where the positivity rate is less than 15% must operate on-site with exceptions only for families who request a hybrid option or students who are quarantined. As of Monday, August 17, Allamakee County reported a 5.9% positivity average, ranking in the bottom one-third of counties in the state of Iowa and not allowing for either the Allamakee, Eastern Allamakee or Postville Community School Districts to petition the state for online or remote learning classes only at this point.
