Health officials monitoring COVID-19 cases among Lake County students

Health officials in Lake County are following up on the first COVID-19 cases to be identified within the county’s school system.

Cases have been diagnosed in St. Ignatius Middle and High Schools, as well as K. William Harvey Elementary and Ronan Middle School in Ronan, according to a press release from the Lake County-CSKT Unified Command Center issued late Friday night.

No evidence of spread within the schools has been identified, according to the release.

When officials are notified of a positive COVID-19 lab result, Lake or CSKT Tribal Health follows up with the case to issue an isolation order and conduct a contact investigation. Contacts are then confidentially notified and placed under a 14-day quarantine with the option of being tested.

Children and parents who have not been contacted by either county or tribal health officials have not been named as a close contact, and no action is needed on their part.

“With the re-opening of schools, we fully anticipated there to be cases of COVID-19 in the school setting,” the press release states. “In preparation for that, conversations with school leadership have been ongoing since spring. We have faith in our school administrators, faculty and staff that everyone is doing the best that they can to keep the children in our community safe. However, even with the best laid plans, illness is bound to sneak in, whether it be the common cold, influenza, COVID-19, etc.”

The total number of cases identified in Lake County has yet to be announced.

The St. Ignatius School District on Monday issued a clarification on Facebook in response to the command center press release: "The only time we will release information concerning (COVID-19) is when we have cases that have a direct impact on school personnel and/or students that we have received from Lake County Health or Tribal Health . At this point we have had one case of (COVID-19) that was documented and information released by Tribal Health. This one case did NOT pose any threat to students or staff since the student and siblings had not been in the school for at least 6 days prior to testing. Therefore, there was no need to report or announce any information about this case. Moving forward, we will only announce (COVID-19) information if it has a direct possibility that staff and/or students have been potentially exposed to Covid. Tribal Health or Lake County will notify you personally if a student or staff …”

State health officials on Sept. 16 published information about COVID-19 cases and outbreaks in individual public grade schools and universities. The initial report shows that 68 of the state’s roughly 147,000 public school students have tested positive for COVID-19, along with another 96 cases in Montana's colleges and universities.

That report, which will be updated each Wednesday, shows no cases for Lake County so far.

It is available online at the Department of Public Health and Human Services website.