Cuyahoga County Schools Report 51 COVID-19 Cases Over The Past Two Weeks

The Cuyahoga County Board of Health is investigating 51 COVID-19 cases in school-related settings over the past two weeks, health officials said.

Forty-two students and nine staff members have tested positive across six K-12 school districts and three universities, the county’s Medical Director Dr. Heidi Gullett said in a press briefing with county officials Friday.

The health board is not releasing the specific school districts with cases until the new public reporting system through the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) is implemented starting next week, she said.

Most of the cases are related to school sports, said Romona Brazile, the co-director of prevention and wellness for the county. Health officials have received a variety of responses from parents who have been instructed to quarantine or isolate their children who may have come into contact with someone confirmed to have COVID-19, she said.

“[Some] are very upset with their child being placed into quarantine,” she said. “We understand their disappointment, but this effort is done to minimize the spread in schools.”

Health officials are concerned about protecting the privacy of infected students and staff, as there may be a stigma associated with people who have contracted the coronavirus, Brazile said.

So far, 10.2 percent of the county’s total cases have been in children, Gullett said.

The median age of COVID-19 cases overall has dropped to 42, indicating that younger people are accounting for many of the new cases, she said.

This past week, COVID-19 cases continued to decrease in the county, with 479 newly reported cases and 27 deaths, Gullett said.

Hospitalizations and ventilator use are also down, she said. The county leads the state in hospitalizations reported since the pandemic began, Health Commissioner Terry Allan said.

Gullett also addressed recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that showed six percent of COVID-19 deaths nationwide did not have underlying conditions. The virus causes many different conditions that can contribute to someone’s death, she said.

“COVID-19 causes lots of other kinds of dysfunction or problems with organs throughout the body,” she said. “COVID-19 has the potential to affect almost every system in the body.”

Allan warned citizens to take COVID-19 precautions, such as wearing masks over the Labor Day weekend. The county saw its highest spike in cases since the pandemic began near the July 4 holiday, with cases jumping from 213 to 919, he said.

“The surge was clearly exacerbated following the July 4 weekend, when folks went out, and unfortunately we didn’t see the levels of masking and social distancing that were necessary to try and prevent community transmission,” Allan said.

Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) in the area are collaborating to increase testing in low-income communities and minority populations, said Jean Polster, CEO of Neighborhood Family Practice, a community health center in Cleveland.

The FQHCs received more than $2 million in June from the Federal Bureau of Primary Health Care to use for testing and outreach, Polster said.

The goal of the collaborative is to pool funds together to expand testing, especially for minority groups in Cleveland, she said.

So far, the community health centers involved in the initiative have been holding pop-up testing and outreach events for African-American, Latinx and Asian communities, she said. Anyone can get a test, even if they do not have symptoms, Polster said.

The health centers are also collaborating with local health departments, and the tests are sent to Cleveland Clinic labs for quick results, she said.

The funding has allowed the tests to be administered at no cost for individuals who do not have insurance, she said.

County Executive Armond Budish said in the briefing that officials have created a task force that will research racial discrepancies in county government.

The committee will analyze data on whether the county’s current efforts to address racial gaps in iareas such as healthcare, housing, jobs and education are working effectively, he said.