Sports make up most of Pierce County school COVID-19 outbreaks, new data shows
The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department recently changed the way it reports COVID-19 outbreaks in schools.
Instead of tracking outbreaks where they occur, the health department will report how they occur.
Outbreaks will fit into one of the following categories: classroom, sports, transportation or other (non-sports extracurricular activity).
So far, most school-related outbreak infections — 89 percent— are related to sports activities, while 8 percent took place in the classroom.
Previously, TPCHD reported outbreaks by region, such as Tacoma, South Pierce County and East Pierce County. Health officials decided to change that after a deeper dive into schools data following an Omicron outbreak linked to high school wrestling tournaments in December.
The change is intended to make the data more useful by telling people how outbreaks originated, according to TPCHD.
“You’ll see most outbreaks take place outside of classrooms. The wrestling tournament outbreaks hinted at this, and data backs it up,” TPCHD said in a blog post.
TPCHD defines K-12 school outbreaks as 3 or more cases or 10 percent or more of a group in a shared location over the last 28 days.
School outbreaks as of Jan. 20:
- Sports: 8 (80 cases)
- Classroom: 2 (7 cases)
- Transportation: 0
- Other: 1 (3 cases)
