EVANSTON — Students and staff of Uinta County School District No. 1 have again been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic this week as positive cases have been confirmed in individuals at three district schools. The positive cases were confirmed late on the afternoon of Friday, Sept. 18, resulting in students and staff at Evanston High School, Evanston Middle School and Aspen Elementary being quarantined due to exposure. District Superintendent Ryan Thomas and Uinta County Public Health Nurse Manager Kim Proffit said approximately 40 students and two teachers have been quarantined.

Proffit said public health staff spent the weekend conducting contact tracing with the assistance of school nurses, who Proffit said have been amazing to work with. “They’ve literally been going into classrooms and measuring the distance between desks to help determine who needs to be quarantined and who doesn’t,” she said.

Proffit said the goal is to be very precise about identifying who should be quarantined based on proximity to a positive case rather than quarantining entire grades or entire classrooms. She said disruptions at Aspen Elementary in particular have been minimal because of the excellent job the school is doing at maintaining social distancing between students.

Thomas said quarantine decisions really come down to a matter of luck in where students sit in a given classroom, but teachers have been doing an excellent job maintaining assigned seats for contact tracing purposes, even though the layout of classrooms throughout the district varies considerably from school to school and class to class.

Thomas said he’s pleased to hear the three students who have tested positive at the three schools are doing well and are not experiencing severe illness. He’s hopeful that as the school year progresses, quarantines won’t impact the same students multiple times, but said that’s certainly possible. Thomas said teachers from all impacted schools will be working with the students who are quarantined to ensure they’re still receiving instruction while out of the classroom.

The quarantines unfortunately have impacted high school sports as well during EHS Homecoming week. Players have reportedly been quarantined from both the football and volleyball teams. Proffit said her office has been flooded with phone calls from concerned parents trying to understand why their son or daughter has been quarantined. “I empathize with everybody who’s been impacted,” she said. “But they’re asking really good and important questions and people are being very understanding and kind.”

One of those really good questions, Proffit said, is how being quarantined and unable to attend athletic practices will impact player eligibility when students are released from quarantine and able to return to practice. Proffit said her office is reaching out to the Wyoming High School Activities Association in an effort to find an answer to that question.

Both Proffit and Thomas said there is no evidence the infection has been contracted or spread at any schools to this point and the identified cases appear to all be the result of community spread.

“It’s pretty clear it’s not coming from the schools,” said Proffit, who also expressed appreciation for students and staff wearing masks, which will hopefully prevent any of the quarantined individuals from actually coming down with the illness. When approximately two dozen students from Uinta Meadows Elementary were quarantined earlier this month, none of those individuals went on to contract the virus. “The schools really need to be commended,” she said.

Proffit said not only is the mask wearing likely preventing the spread of illness, but it is possible the state may end up changing quarantine guidelines if the individuals exposed are masked as well. She said massive testing is being conducted on quarantined students in another school district in the state and, if those tests all come back negative, the guidance may be changed to not necessarily require quarantine if those exposed are masked.

While neighboring Utah is grappling with a massive increase in confirmed cases in recent days, with more than 3,000 cases reportedly confirmed over three days, the situation in Uinta County remains relatively stable with 13 current active cases, six of which are individuals in the Bridger Valley.

None of the Bridger Valley cases are associated with schools at this time.

Proffit said she wants to caution residents that the virus is definitely still around, although she understands people are experiencing pandemic fatigue and a desire to no longer be subject to public health orders and restrictions. “It’s hard to imagine it if no one in your family is being touched by it,” she said, “but it’s definitely still here.”

She said she’s heard of several cases lately where people initially shrugged off symptoms as being allergies or related to the smoke in the air. “They shrugged it off and then felt better for a couple of days and then really got sick,” she said. Her advice is that people should be tested if they experience a constellation of symptoms, meaning more than one of the symptoms associated with COVID-19.

For children, she said that constellation of symptoms can include gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. “If your child has one of those along with a fever or a runny hose, have them tested to rule out COVID.”

Proffit also urged people to get their flu shots this year, which are now available at pharmacies and by appointment at the local public health office. Flu shots will also be available this Saturday, Sept. 26, at the drive-through health fair at Evanston Regional Hospital.

She said the Southern Hemisphere had a relatively mild flu season, which has largely been attributed to COVID precautions, and that the Northern Hemisphere usually follows suit. However, she said public health officials are strongly recommending the flu shot this year in hopes of avoiding a brutal flu season that occurs in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.

Flu shots and other precautions such as mask wearing can help local public health meet what have been described by Uinta County Health Officer Mike Adams as two primary goals of keeping kids in school and protecting the vulnerable. Proffit, who works extensively with Adams on the Uinta County COVID Response Team, said it’s unfortunate the goal of protecting the vulnerable has been somewhat forgotten in the debates about mask wearing, etc. “Mask wearing is something we do, an inconvenience we put up with, to protect others who are more vulnerable,” she said.

As of press time, there are 711 active cases in Wyoming.