by Kate Evans
Morgan County Schools students, staff and visitors will be required to wear face masks this coming week of school — the week of August 30 –as the Morgan County COVID-19 transmission levels remain high.
The weekly total of new COVID-19 cases for the week of August 20-26 was 55 cases, according to the Morgan County Health Department on Friday. According to the West Virginia DHHR, 86 county residents have active cases of the highly-contagious respiratory disease and one more local person has died of the virus. A total of 26 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 in Morgan County since last year.
Morgan County was orange on the WV DHHR COVID alert map on Friday, August 27, indicating a high level of transmission in the community.
Due to the recent surge in the Delta variant of COVID-19, students, staff and visitors will wear face masks on buses, in school buildings and in areas where social distancing is limited. The mask order goes into effect based on COVID case data. For Morgan County, a low transmission level of new cases is 0-1.99 cases; moderate is 2-9.9 cases; substantial is 10-19.99 cases and high is 20+ cases.
The Morgan-Berkeley County Health Department issued the mask mandate order on August 9.
