This week, nine counties moved from the “orange” risk phase to “yellow” and 13 counties moved from “yellow” to “orange”, according to the latest data from OSDH as they continue to monitor closely the statewide hospitalization trends for COVID-19.
COVID-19 cases in Creek County continue to trend upward, but the fears that the start of school would cause a surge of new cases has not materialized. Sapulpa schools, which started classes on August 24th, has had a total of 5 cases reported among the staff, and 16 among the students. As of today, there is one active case in the staff, and 2 in students. Sapulpa Public Schools has a total of 3,552 enrolled students, 25 percent of whom are already virtual.
According to OSDH, school-aged children between 5 and 17 years of age make up less than 10% of the total cases in Oklahoma, and they make up 0.10% of the deaths.
Despite the low ratio for school-aged children with COVID, and the low amount of students with active cases, students could still see themselves doing Distance Learning before the end of the semester. Sapulpa Public Schools is using the state’s color-coded risk chart to determine the direction for the district. At the end of the first week of school, OSDH reported 9.19 cases per 100,000 in Creek County. The next week it was 12.98 cases, followed by 15.38 cases, then 16.38 cases, and now 18.4 cases, as reported today. Though the number of cases has continued to grow, the amount by which they were growing was shrinking until this week, when it reversed and jumped by 2.02 cases per 100,000. If the trend continues, we could see Sapulpa Public Schools hit Orange Level 2 and have to reactivate Distance Learning for the majority of the student body in as little as seven weeks. See the full Return to Learn plan at sapulpaps.org. It’s worth noting that the Return to Learn plan has been modified once by the Board of Education since it was created.
Creek County has had a total of 1,121 cases, resulting in 33 deaths and 950 recoveries. In Sapulpa, there have been 493 cases with 11 deaths and 426 recoveries.
OSDH says they will now calculate the alert system by the date the result was reported (rather than the date of symptom onset, as previously done). They say it improves transparency, as the calculations can be performed with publicly available data.
