Over 100 cases in Carbon County

As temperatures continue to drop, the number of positive coronavirus (COVID-19) cases both within Carbon County and across Wyoming continue to rise. With winter well on its way and the holidays approaching, the number of active cases in the county have surpassed 100 while a recent decision by Carbon County Public Health has caused some frustration with parents in Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD2).

On Sunday, CCSD2 Superintendent Jim Copeland provided an update on positive cases within the district and the quarantine of three sports teams. According to Copeland, two additional staff members from schools in the northern part of the school district had test positive along with one student.

Additionally, the Hanna, Elk Mountain, Medicine Bow (HEM) Lady Miners were quarantined following direct contact with a positive case on an opposing team and the HEM junior high basketball girls team was quarantined following a game played against Little Snake River Valley. In Saratoga, the middle school girls basketball team was quarantined after a game played against the Rawlins middle school girls basketball team.

“Unfortunately, this involves a large number of students,” wrote Copeland. “During basketball games, direct contact is much more likely due to no masks and contact with the same ball and each other as the game is played.”

During the November 16 meeting of the CCSD2 Board of Trustees, both Saratoga parents and Saratoga Middle High School (SMHS) staff members were in attendance to express their concern with the blanket quarantine issued by public health. Greg Bartlett, SMHS athletic director, informed the board he had reached out to multiple districts across the state who had informed him that they had not experienced a blanket quarantine following a potential contact.

Members of the board, several of whom are parents and have kids included in the quarantine, shared the frustration of audience members.

Prior to the meeting, the Board of Trustees had talked with Amanda Brown, Carbon County Public Health nurse manager, about the quarantine issued by the department. According to the board members, they had been informed that school nurses and coaches could help decrease the number of students in quarantine if they could show how much time a student had spent on the court.

A number of coaches who were in attendance were quick to state that they were willing to put in that extra time.

Currently, the cases in Carbon County don’t appear to show any signs of slowing down their increase. Within a week, the active cases in the county had increased from 86 to over 120. The situational debrief released by the Carbon County COVID-19 Incident Management Team put the number of active cases in the county at 124 as of November 16 with the Wyoming Department of Health’s website putting the number of active cases at 149.

Last week, the Saratoga Sun reached out to Jacquelin Wells, public information officer for the incident management team, about the number of cases in the Valley. According to Wells, as of last week, there had been 19 active cases in the areas of Saratoga, Encampment and Riverside with 63 total cases since the pandemic began.

Carbon County, with the increased number of active cases, has also increased the total number of cases since March. As of November 16, the county had seen 431 total confirmed cases and 43 probable cases. Additionally, there had been 7,278 resulted (both positive and negative) COVID-19 tests from Carbon County.

According to the Wyoming Department of Health website, Memorial Hospital of Carbon County was reporting only one hospitalization as a result of COVID-19.

In a press conference on November 13, Governor Mark Gordon referred to Wyomingites as “knuckleheads” as the cases in the state have continued to skyrocket over the past several weeks. Since the start of the pandemic, Gordon has implored Wyoming residents to “do the right thing” by wearing a mask and observing social distancing. While no new health orders were issued, the governor appeared to suggest that stricter health orders would be issued this week.

As of Monday, there were 10,291 active cases of COVID-19 in Wyoming with 19,885 lab confirmed cases since the pandemic began. Wyoming has also seen a number of COVID-19 related deaths in recent weeks, with 17 announced on Sunday, to bring the total number to 144.