On Oct. 26, GCISD Director of Health Services Amy Talbo informed the school board the district is seeing an increase in all five metrics established by Tarrant County public health officials for safe in-person learning.
The five metrics currently set by Tarrant County include a positivity rate under 10%, a rate of reported cases under 2,000 a week and a hospitalization rate under 10%.
Health officials also have to track the percentage of illnesses similar to COVID-19, as well as the overall case count.
According to Talbo, the positivity rate in the district has increased by 3% since September, and the number of new positive cases reported each week has doubled in the last month.
“I am kind of sad to report that we are seeing an increase in all five metrics," Talbo said. "In September, we were at 2,431 [reported cases], and in October, we were at 4,518 [reported cases]."
There is also an increase in reported cases in the district for kids age 15 and younger, she said. From July to October, the number of reported cases for children in that age group has increased from 5% to 7% of the student population. At the county level, the number of COVID-19 cases for individuals ages 15-24 has only gone up 1% during that same time period.
Despite the rise in reported COVID-19 cases, Talbo said GCISD schools are still seeing a low transmission rate on campus and that the majority of reported cases have come from at-home transmission.
“What we have seen are some of those [transmissions] are siblings of positive cases," she said. "We are not having a lot of spread within classrooms, within grades, within campuses."
Since Sept. 14, there have been 68 test-confirmed COVID-19 student cases and 21 test-confirmed COVID-19 staff cases in GCISD.
Of those 68 student cases, 43 were students taking part in in-person learning, 18 were students in remote learning and a total of seven positive results were from students involved in remote learning and some type of extracurricular activity.
