SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — Spokane Public Schools (SPS) and West Valley School District say that there has not been an outbreak of COVID-19 so far this school year.
A statement from SPS said that there has not been a significant number of absences compared to last year.
During the 2022-23 school year, the absence percentage for SPS was 91.8%. For 2023-2024, it is 91.9%.
“I also reached out to our nursing staff, and it doesn’t sound like there’s been an uptick in COVID cases communicated to our staff,” Ryan Lancaster, the Director of Media and Marketing for SPS, said.
Along with SPS, West Valley School District also haven’t had a COVID outbreak so far.
“We’re seeing a general pattern. Typically, when large crowds of people get back together, we do see small upticks. And so, a week or two after school started, we did see some more positives than we did at the beginning of the school year. That’s pretty normal,” Vicki Leifer, the Assistant Superintendent for West Valley School District, said.
As of May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are no longer reporting COVID-19 case numbers or deaths. The only way to track it is through wastewater data.
According to wastewater data from Riverside Park Water Reclamation Facility, during the week of Sept. 9, Spokane County saw the highest number of COVID-19 cases since Dec. 2022.
However, the data from the week of Sept. 16, which was the last week of reporting, those COVID-19 case numbers have decreased.
