Color-coded school thresholds added to Utah COVID-19 dashboard | Utah Department of Health – Utah Department of Health

(Salt Lake City) The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) has added new color-coded information to the school tab of the COVID-19 data dashboard to make it easier to see which schools are approaching a Test to Stay event. During a Test to Stay event, schools are legally required to conduct a testing event of all students.

Utah law requires schools to do a Test to Stay event when:

Schools with confirmed COVID-19 cases will be shown in red, yellow, or green depending on how many students have tested positive for COVID. Those listed in red are schools which have met or exceeded the Test to Stay event requirements. Those schools listed in yellow are schools which are more than halfway to meeting the requirements and schools in green are less than halfway to meeting the requirements for Test to Stay.

We want to do all we can to keep students in school while keeping them as safe as possible. While school case data has been available for some time, we hope a color coding system will make it easier for families to know how many children have been identified with COVID-19 in their childs school so they can make the best decisions for their family during the pandemic, said Dr. Leisha Nolen, UDOH state epidemiologist.

Data on the state COVID-19 dashboard may not always match what is reported on local health department or school district websites due to delays in reporting school-associated cases to the UDOH. School-associated cases are identified through interviews with the person or parents/guardians of a child who tests positive by health department staff, and only cases who have been linked to a school are displayed on the state dashboard. Local health departments have the most accurate and timely data and will use this local data to determine when to implement Test to Stay, not the data on the state dashboard.

More information on Test to Stay can be found at https://coronavirus.utah.gov/education/#test-to-stay. Data on COVID-19 in schools and school-age children can be found at https://coronavirus.utah.gov/case-counts/#schools.

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Color-coded school thresholds added to Utah COVID-19 dashboard | Utah Department of Health - Utah Department of Health