Mississippi’s first school district to open now has six students with COVID-19

Published 2:17 pm Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Six cases of COVID-19 coronavirus have been reported in a Mississippi school district that opened last Monday, the school district reported Tuesday.

National attention was focused last week on the Corinth School District as it was one of the first in Mississippi and among the first in the nation to open with in-person classes.

The Corinth District announced on Friday that one student at Corinth High School was found to be infected with the virus. On Monday afternoon, the district announced two more cases had been found at the school. On Tuesday, two additional positive cases were reported, bringing the total known positive cases to five.

Subscribe to our free email newsletter

Get the latest news sent to your inbox

Mississippi State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said the state has identified six total cases in students.

The district said in a social media post that anyone who was within close proximity to those children had been informed and would need to be quarantined for 14 days before returning to school.

On Friday, Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said the first student who tested positive for COVID-19 had caused 14 other students to be quarantined as a result.

Dobbs later said he believed the state would be wise to delay further openings of schools until the spread of the virus could be slowed.

“We’re all kind of learning as we’re going through this and It’s like a really frightening experiment that we’re going through and in some places, I think it will go well and in some places it won’t,” Dobbs said.

Dobbs said schools should consider delaying start until at least September, giving the state time to slow the virus more.

“It’s impossible to imagine we’re not going to pay the price for cramming kids in schools right now,” he said. “There’s no plausible scenario where it’s just not going to be bad.”