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As COVID cases continue to rise across the state and the nation, we continue to get questions from the public in regards to how many cases are in the Cherokee County schools system?

That is a question WEIS Radio has been trying to get an answer to from the Alabama Department of Public Health for several days now. On Thursday, we reached out to Cherokee County EMA Director Shawn Rogers and he told us “ADPH won’t provide us with that information as I believe that information is being provided to the Alabama State Department of Education”.

We also sent an email to Arrol Sheeehan who is the Director of Public Information for the Alabama Department of Public Health. When asked if ADPH could provide the latest COVID numbers for Cherokee County Schools we were told “I’m sorry but it’s not available today”.

During our most recent interview with Cherokee County Superintendent of Education Mike Welsh, he had this to say concerning COVID cases within the system.

We are currently in the process of reaching out to Cherokee County Superintendent of Education Mike Welsh to see if he can provide us with some additional information. As soon as we get any information that he is able to provide we will be updating the public with what we know. 

According to the State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris, more than 5,000 students tested positive from COVID-19 in the state over the last week. Dr. Harris said that’s a 700 percent increase in school-age students from this time last year.

Harris reminded everyone that he and other health leaders believe all children in all schools should be masked.

Alabama has maintained a 23 percent COVID positive rate over the past week. That’s one of the highest in the country. There were 5,000 positive cases in Alabama on Thursday alone.

There are 2,879 COVID patients in the hospital, 45 of those are pediatric patients.

The ADPH COVID-19 School Dashboard went back online today (Friday, August 28th) you can view it below. `