Students in Cherokee County Schools will still be required to wear masks on campus following a vote by the board of education on Sept. 8.
School board members unanimously voted to continue the mask mandate put in place on Sept. 1. The board voted 5-2 against a mask mandate proper to school starting in August. However, all board members voiced their support for a mandate as the number of students in quarantine due to COVID-19 protocols continued to climb, including a cluster at Hiwassee Dam High School that temporarily shut down the building.
For the rest of the school year, the district will be required to vote on its mask stats at least once a month following passage of a bill in the N.C. General Assembly.
“It requires all school boards, regardless of what your current face-covering policy is, to vote on your current face-covering policy at least once a month throughout the entire 2021-22 school year, whether you have face masks required or optional,” board attorney Dean Shatley said.
He said the school district’s plan would follow the new policy.
As of Saturday in Cherokee County Schools, there were 440 students in quarantine, 76 who were positive with the coronavirus. The district’s total enrollment is 2,982.
As of Friday, The Learning Center charter school in Murphy reported one staff member was in quarantine and another tested positive for COVID, while 19 students were in quarantine with two positive test results. The charter school has 203 students.
COVID-19 numbers
From Sept. 8 through Monday afternoon, two more local residents died from the virus, one who was in their 50s and another in their 80s. That puts the county’s COVID death toll at 68.
In that time, 199 residents total tested positive for the virus, 155 without a known source of transmission. At least 191 of those cases developed symptoms, two people have been hospitalized and all have been isolated.
Since the pandemic started through Monday, the health department has conducted 19,503 tests, 15,220 which were negative, Of the 4,129 positive tests, 3,8215 have been released, 68 are deceased and 240 are active.
According to the N.C. Department of Health & Human Services, 56 percent of state residents ages 18 and older have been at least partially vaccinated, while 51 percent have been fully vaccinated. There have been 10,839,180 total vaccine doses administered statewide so far.
Vaccine rates
The Cherokee County Health Department continues to offer vaccines at no charge for ages 12 and up at the office in Murphy. Health Director David Badger said vaccine rates in the county have remained relatively static since last week, although the health department was continuing to see a slight uptick in the number of first doses administered.
However, the lion’s share of COVID-19 vaccines given in the county were third doses to immunocompromised people.
As of Saturday, “We’re sitting at 37 percent of our population is fully vaccinated, and that was around 35 percent two weeks ago, so that’s a positive,” Badger said. “I think those are good things that we really need to kind of encourage, however we can with how valuable vaccines are, and part of putting this in a place where we can kind function with it more readily.”
He added that the health department was giving 100-150 vaccines a day.
“Probably most of that accounts for booster doses, with that population that’s high risk with underlying immunocompromised issues,” Badger said.
The county was still seeing 25-30 cases per day on average.
“I know the’s some talk from the state level that maybe we’re seeing a plateau in numbers,” Badger said. “I’m not sure we’re seeing that locally yet.”
Mu varient
Badger said the the Mu variant, which has been labeled a “variant of concern” by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, was not a serious threat in the county.
“It’s kind of been in the national news, and the brighter people at the top worldwide have kind of labeled it as a variant of interest,” Badger said. “I think at this point it’s just kind of continuing to move through the population, so that’s kind of where they’re at with it. A while back they were intrigued with the Lambda variant and also tabled it a variant of interest, but the last information I’ve read about that, the Lambda is not spreading like they thought it might.”
Some research has shown that the Mu variant may be more vaccine-resistant than other COVID-19 variants, like the Delta that has having such a significant impact in the South.
Hospitals update
Hospitals in the area remains under stress from the virus, with Union General Hospital in Blairsville, Ga., at 43 COVID-19 patients total as of Thursday, with 41 of them unvaccinated. The hospital’s intensive care unit was also nearly double capacity, with the five-bed ward housing nine patients.
Union General has treated more than 900 patients with COVID-19 since the pandemic started, according to a release. Numbers for Erlanger Western Carolina Hospital in Peachtree were not available.
“The virus is out there,” Badger said. “It’s still something that’s impacting our communities that we’re kind of dealing with – not just we, but we as a community are dealing with day in and day out. And again, the the most effective way forward is going to be vaccines, layering that approach with other infection controls such as masking and social distancing when appropriate.”