Here’s how southwest IL schools check coronavirus cases to help protect students
Five of the seven southwestern Illinois counties in Region 4 had warning signs of increased COVID-19 transmission in the last full week of September, according to the latest school metrics data from the Illinois Department of Public Health.
There are four metrics IDPH is tracking by county to help local health departments and school districts make decisions for schools: coronavirus test positivity rate, the number of new cases per 100,000, new cases and youth cases. The data is updated each Friday with the week prior — Friday’s update showed data from Sept. 20 through Sept. 26.
Region 4 is the state’s name for seven metro-east counties: St. Clair, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, Washington, Clinton and Bond. All except for Madison and Monroe counties were marked as having at least moderate community transmission. Community transmission is when a case is identified without a clear source of the infection.
The data from IDPH is intended to help guide decisions about reopening schools, but some districts have developed their own systems for analyzing data in conjunction with those metrics, especially since they take nearly a week to be posted
“This is data that (IDPH) wants to be useful,” Belleville High School 201 Superintendent Brian Mentzer said. “The time differentiation was something that was on my mind initially. … It’s certainly helpful when you’re looking from a trend standpoint.”
In addition to the IDPH metrics, Mentzer said the district looks at the St. Clair County data on a daily basis, and that he watches the daily briefing from the St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency on Facebook as frequently as he can.
District 201 includes Belleville West and Belleville East high schools, which are offering a hybrid schedule of classes in which students combine online training with in-person classes. Students can also choose an online only schedule.
East St. Louis School District 189 officials look at several data sources. ZIP code data, St. Clair Emergency Management data, reports from the Belleville News-Democrat and conversations with the East Side Health District and St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern all contribute to their analysis, according to an email from the district.
On Monday, District 189 announced that it will keep classrooms closed to students and only offer online training, or “remote learning,” when the second quarter begins Oct. 19.
“As community conditions improve, we will consider shifting to a hybrid or full in-school model,” District 189 Superintendent Arthur Culver said in a letter.
The data analysis District 189 conducts includes, but is not limited to, looking at the number of current positive COVID-19 cases in the 11 ZIP codes served by the district in St. Clair and Madison counties, calculating the percentage of St. Clair County cases that are within those ZIP codes, the applied ratio of cases per 100,000 within those ZIP codes, and the number of cases among staff, who may not live within the served ZIP codes or St. Clair County.
Culver said 22 staff members have tested positive since July 1 and four employees of the food and bus companies that serve the district have tested positive for a total of 26.
IDPH set target goals for each of the four metrics:
Test positivity: less than or equal to 5%
New cases per 100,000: less than 50 per 100,000
New cases: decreasing or stable from week to week
Youth cases: decreasing or stable from week to week
For each metric, each county’s community transmission is labeled as minimal, moderate or substantial. Because the metrics and criteria for targets differ, counties may have some data points that are considered minimal alongside other points that are moderate or substantial.
For example, each of the seven counties had new cases that were considered minimal, meaning that for two weeks, the number of cases increased between 5% and 10%.
Meanwhile, six of those seven counties had substantial community spread, according to the new cases per 100,000, which adjusts for population. The target is to have fewer than 50 cases per 100,000. Randolph County had the lowest, with 75 per 100,000, which is considered moderate. The other six all broke 100 cases per 100,000, and Clinton County had the highest rate, at 279 cases per 100,000.
This story was originally published October 6, 2020 at 7:30 AM.
