GREENWOOD -- A reporting error is making the outbreak of COVID-19 at a Delta high school look 30 times worse than it is, say school officials.
In the first weekly report, released Tuesday by the Mississippi State Department of Health, Greenwood High School is showing 150 students testing positive last week for COVID-19. The actual number was five, said Raven Ray, a spokeswoman for the Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School District.
She said it was uncertain whether the district had reported the data incorrectly, or the Department of Health had wrongly keyed in the information. Next week’s report, she said, will reflect the correction.
Ray said that the other numbers on the report for Greenwood High are accurate: 150 students and 17 teachers and staff quarantined due to exposure to the virus.
Greenwood High is closed this week due to the outbreak. Students who were exposed to the virus are being tested to see if they are infected, and the high school is expected to reopen next Monday.
Classes began last Thursday.
All schools public and private are required to report their weekly COVID-19 numbers to the Department of Health.
Statewide, 342 schools in 43 counties reported. They showed 943 students and 296 employees testing positive for the virus, although the student numbers are inflated by the Greenwood High error. More than 4,400 students and nearly 400 employees were in quarantine.
Lamar County's Oak Grove Middle School, following the correction on Greenwood High, would have the highest number of student positive cases at 44. Magee High School had the most widespread quarantine, involving 426 students and 48 employees.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
The original version of this article incorrectly reported the Lamar County school with the highest number of positive cases of COVID-19 the week of Aug. 2-6.
