DENVER — With class back in full swing, schools across the state are seeing outbreaks of COVID-19.
Data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment shows 137 cases of COVID-19 were reportedamong 14 outbreaks in eight counties from Montrose to Adams. The state considers an outbreak to be five or more cases.
While there are technically 15 outbreaks listed on the website, Pitkin County Health Department said the outbreak at Aspen Middle School "is old and has been closed for months. It should be removed in the next few days." For that reason, we are not considering it as part of this report.
Mesa County saw the most cases, with 30 cases in a total of four schools.
Montrose, El Paso and Douglas counties aren’t far behind. Four schools in DougCo had a total of 28 cases, and four of those cases were staff members in two middle schools.
El Paso County had 27 cases, four of which were staff members. The rest were students in a middle and elementary school.
Montrose County had one outbreak, but it was a big one. An elementary school had 26 cases last week, and 24 of those cases were students.
In the Denver metro, Adams, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties all had cases within the last week.
A spokesperson for Adams 27J tells Denver7:
"We are proactive in an outbreak situation and quarantine the class before TCHD determines we have an outbreak. As soon as we are getting close to an outbreak we start the process of notifying families and any staff that may have been exposed and prepare the teacher and school to roll that class to remote learning. TCHD has access to district spreadsheets where we track positive cases and we also notify them when we have a class that has multiple positive cases to start consulting with them."
El Paso, Mesa and Montrose are the three counties on the list not requiring masks. DougCo started requiring masks for preschool through 6th grade on Aug. 23 in alignment with the Tri-County Health order.