Hunter
11/20/20
As many schools in Johnson County move to online-only learning, officials with the Johnson County Department of Public Health say schools need to work harder to mitigate spread of coronavirus.
Stopping short of saying all county schools should go exclusively virtual, they said high school sports and extracurricular activities were mostly to blame for COVID-19 spreading quickly through the schools.
KCRG TV reports that Jake Riley with JCDPH pointed out that there’s closer contact and more exertion in sports, spraying more droplets in the air than when students are sitting in classrooms. He recommended that participants wear a mask while practicing and playing, and called on schools to implement stricter mandates to require masks among everyone playing sports or participating in extracurricular activities.
With the fast spread of coronavirus, contact tracers are at capacity. Their efforts have changed from talking to all people in a home where someone has tested positive to talking to just one person and having them inform the rest of the household on proper quarantine procedures.