By Hope Shrum
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS — As COVID-19 continues to spread across Indiana disrupting an array of activities, work, and school, the Indiana State Department of Health is working on a dashboard to help educators track the disease.

“Having this information will help better inform how our schools are being impacted by COVID-19 and may help guide districts to guide their operational plans,” said Dr. Kristina Box, commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health, of the data that will be compiled on the new dashboard.

Box provided details of the new data dashboard at Gov. Eric Holcomb’s weekly pandemic update Wednesday and said she hopes it will be available by the end of September.

Schools that opened early have already begun to see COVID-19 cases and some, like Indianapolis Public Schools, have opted to begin the academic year with online teaching.

Box said the state health department has been working for several weeks to get school rosters that will help match positive cases to students. As of last week, the ISDH had between 20,000 and 30,000 student records, but the Indiana Department of Education gave health officials access to 500,000 student records on Tuesday.

With the dashboard, people will be able to see the number of COVID-19 cases in a given school, with one cumulative number for cases involving students, teachers and staff.

At Wednesday’s briefing, Box also said that the ISDH is building a portal to capture the positive cases among students, staff and teachers, and they will ask schools to update their data every 24 hours.

The state health department will be cross-referencing the student record information with their list of positive cases to identify the schools with COVID-19 outbreaks, Box said.

Then, through the portal, they will contact that school to determine whether the student has been in class or been involved in extra-curricular activities, which can help with contact tracing.

Gathering all of the data is necessary to create the dashboard, Box said, and it will help ensure that schools and public health departments are promptly notified when there is a positive case.

As she has during several other weekly press briefings, Box encouraged parents and schools to work together with local health departments to help identify close contacts and prevent the spread of COVID-19 in school settings.

Box also emphasized how important it is for students to not go to school or practice and to complete their quarantine and isolation if they have symptoms, test positive, or are waiting on test results to come back.

“We’ve had a number of cases in our K-12 schools recently where COVID was brought into the school by people who participated in an outside activity, such as a party or a large gathering,” Box said. “This has resulted in more than 100 students being identified as close contacts in one case and led to quarantining of entire football teams or dozens of teachers in a school building in other instances.”

The number of new cases of COVID-19 continues to climb. The health department reported 955 new cases Thursday, for a total of 83,277. There were 11 more deaths, bringing the total to 2,979 Hoosiers who have died from the virus.

“This is an incredibly challenging time for our educational system, and I know it’s chaotic for parents trying to plan whether the child who goes to school in person today might have to switch to virtual learning tomorrow,” Box said. “We’re going to be on this rollercoaster for a while, at least for the foreseeable future, but we can all help make it a smoother ride if we respond to the contact tracers, if we wear our masks, stay home if we’re sick, and wait on our test results.”

FOOTNOTE: Hope Shrum is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.