County officials continue to battle COVID

With a recent-spike in Jack County schools of COVID cases forcing a quarantine of schools for a short time, county officials are watching those numbers decline again.

After watching numbers spike around 28 active cases, those numbers are beginning to decline.

“We were hanging around 8-9 active cases at Jacksboro but that one spike at JES had us about 20-28 active cases county wide, which was high,” County Judge Keith Umphress said.

Those number of active students are trending in the right direction, according to Jacksboro Independent School District Superintendent Dwain Milam. An update was done Nov. 18 at 11:30 a.m.Milam said two active students were still on the books at JES with another three at JMS. None were at the high school.

Even more impressive is the amount of staff cases going down at both schools.Staff cases were down from nine to one at JES and from two to zero at JMS.

JHS has two confirmed staff cases. Eleven cases are confirmed recovered at JHS as is one staff case as of Nov. 18 on the district’s website.

Milam said the collaboration the team has had has been critical in keeping things in check.

“The cooperation between the school district, Jack County Judge Keith Umphress, County Health Authority Dr. Robert Cooper, County Emergency Operations Coordinator Frank Hefner, and City Manager Mike Smith has been paramount in dealing with the pandemic. The collaboration began in March and has been critical in being able to keep the learning environment as safe as possible,” Milam said.

With the spike so close to the holidays, it was discussed to shut down schools for a while. That was off the table because of the drop in cases as Thanksgiving approached statewide for awhile.