Garfield County Re-2 School District released on Wednesday an online dashboard that provides up-to-date numbers of all COVID-19 cases for all its schools.

“The vision for this dashboard is that it shows how COVID is impacting the schools and includes known cases that might have resulted in possible exposure or transmission within the schools,” said Theresa Hamilton, district director of communications.

The dashboard shows how many positive COVID-19 cases have currently been identified, where transmission occurred as well as how many current cases per community and grade level.

The dashboard also shows the current number of students, staff and cohorts from the district are in quarantine.

In addition to current numbers, the dashboard provides graphs representing trends and numbers dating as far back as the beginning of October.

However, the data necessarily represent every single known exposure, Hamilton explained.

“If we have a child who tests positive or is symptomatic on Sunday, we work two days back to determine who needs to be quarantined,” she said. “That individual will not be reflected in our data.”

In other words, there still could be some COVID-19 cases moving forward.

“I’m sure we’ll see some additional quarantines,” she said. “However, Garfield County Re-2 is committed to maximizing the number of days kids are in person. We know that we want our kids in school to the greatest extent possible because we know that’s six, seven, eight hours of them engaged and practicing safe behaviors and helping to limit the community spread as well.”

“And an in-person education is best for our kids, anyway.”

rerku@postindependent.com