Schools are reflecting on what’s happened since the start of Covid- 19 Pandemic and prepare for yet another new variant, Omicron. They tell us how they have responded so far and what they plan to do. While there was an increase in cases in the overall cases in the month of August for Washington County, there were a total of 5,916 New Cases, there has also been an increase in the number of individuals vaccinated. Washington County is currently at 50.8% vaccinated.
Gathering data from Arkansas Department of Health to see how the Covid-19 vaccines have impacted the amount of Covid-19 cases since the start of this school year. We will be looking at three main variables which include; New Cases Today, Positive Cases, and Vaccine data to see the progress being made.
We reached out to two local University’s and a High School to see how they are managing the affects. We are analyzing data on the 15th of every month. Two of the schools are in Washington County and on August 15, 2021 there were 104 new cases reported. September 15, 2021 there were 148, October 15, 2021 there were 41, and November 15,, 2021 there were 6 new cases reported. As you can see from this information, the amount of Covid cases are slowly starting to fall within Washington County.
As for New Covid Vaccines does given, we have data on the entire state. On August 15, 2021 there were 6,388, September 15, 2021 7,557 new doses, October 15, 2021 there were 6,986 given and on November 15, 2021 there were 2,769 new doses given. The visuals below will allow you to better compare the data.
The first school is University of Arkansas which is located in Fayetteville, AR and apart of Washington County. We were able to get in contact with Zachary Brown, Assistant Director of Communications for the Pat Walker Health Center. We asked when they saw a peak in active cases for the school and Brown responded with, “it essentially started increasing around August 23rd which was the first day of school and peaked a couple weeks after Labor Day. Then it’s subsided down and has been stable ever since.” University of Arkansas is also the only school that we interviewed that does offer their students incentives if they do get fully vaccinated.
The second school is Harber High School located in Springdale, AR and apart of Washington County as well. We talked to Tommy Deffebaugh, Physical Education Teacher and Head Men’s Basketball Coach. Coach Deffebaugh is passionate about his students and takes pride in the efforts made to support them. We asked how their cases were affected in August and he said, “The number of cases kind of started going back up again. Masks weren’t mandatory and still are not mandatory. Right now, I think vaccinations are going up and a lot of students are getting vaccinated.” We then followed up by asking if sports were any different for them. His response to that was, “We had to take pictures of the benches so we knew where kids were sitting and always had some type of seating chart.” This is referring to the teas benches and how they had to set them up with a gap between to meet guidelines during season.
