TRENTON – Only this week did the state move to require schools to report student and staff Covid test results to the state Department of Health. Before this point, schools were encouraged, but not required, to do so.
Effective Oct. 26, schools must begin supplying the data, which Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said will be publicly available on the state’s dashboard.
Untilnow, the state dashboard’s informationonly displayed cases that met the state’s definition of an in-school outbreak, with proven in-school transmission. That set of numbers greatly obscuredCovid’s presence in the state’s schools. Schools have also not been required to share Covid infection data with the public. Some elected to do so, and others did not.
An illustration of the problem is the state’s dashboard report for Oct. 7, which shows Cape May County with four school outbreaks involving 15 individuals with cases linked to those outbreaks.
One county school district that provides data for public access is the Lower Township Elementary School District, with four elementary schools. Data on the school district’s dashboard shows 54 accumulated positive Covid cases among students and 17 among staff, as of Oct. 6.
School districts that report Covid infections and quarantines do so differently and on various schedules.
The state effort should provide weekly updates, with one consistent data format. The state has not yet made clear how this data will be formatted. It is unknown if individual school numbers will be part of the publicly available data or if the numbers will be in an aggregate form.
