The state Department of Health and Social Services reported in their weekly case update that the statewide COVID-19 transmission rate is increasing with higher case rates and test positivity following worries over a possible 4th wave of the coronavirus, fueled by variants and the lifting of restrictions in multiple states.
Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Superintendent John O’Brien spoke to KSRM, “The Eastern Peninsula, the Seward area, their numbers have gone up significantly. Central Peninsula was also experiencing an uptick in numbers. Oddly enough, Southern Peninsula, this time around, their numbers are very low. I have seen the preliminary numbers for over the weekend and, unfortunately, you’re going to see that increase in uptick. There’s going to be significant increase for the Central Peninsula and, again, especially for its small size, another significant increase for the Eastern Peninsula, the Seward/Moose Pass area. What this means for in-person schooling, we’re still good to go there. We’re not planning on moving anyone to that extreme level where we would be going back to remote learning. We have high confidence in our mitigation and our masking requirements and we’re not seeing transmission in school, but what we are seeing is a lot of exposure happening over the weekend, particularly sleepovers, club athletics. We are seeing lots of cases where things are impacting that and we have had to do some quarantining of certain groups or cohorts of students in some of our schools because of that.”
O’Brien stated that his goal is to not have to shut down any of the KPBSD schools since there are around 30 school days left in the year. He also said that in-person graduation plans are moving forward at this time, but stated that the District will be keeping a close eye on the COVID-19 numbers to see if they will play a factor with planned graduation events.