KIBSD reports 10 new COVID cases Thursday, 25 since start of school year

Ten COVID cases have been reported Thursday in Kodiak public schools, according to a release from the district. That makes for a total of 25 cases since the start of the school year.

The COVID-19 cases are linked to four people each at Kodiak High School and North Star Elementary. There have also been cases with one person at Main Elementary, East Elementary and Kodiak Middle School.

Close contacts and positive cases have been instructed to quarantine and isolate as a precaution. KIBSD Superintendent Larry LeDoux. says the schools that had positive cases have undergone deep cleaning and were reopened Thursday for in-person learning.

“We’re working really, really hard to keep them in school. And we’re just trying to move forward and follow the contagion. We’re doing a lot of asymptomatic testing, and that’s helping,” LeDoux said.

He says the district is doing whatever it can to keep the case count down through precautions on campus and widespread testing.

“In spite of all of that, we have our activities programs going on. If you walk into any school, you’ll see it full of kids wearing masks, doing kid things in spite of the masks,” LeDoux said.

The school year is only in its first few weeks. Officials in the Kodiak Emergency Operations Center have said that the current wave of COVID may continue to rise. According to the EOC, as of Thursday there are 140 active cases of COVID-19 in Kodiak.