As schools prepare to welcome students in person this fall, Guthrie County Public Health appreciates the efforts of schools that have recently had individuals test positive for COVID-19.

The Panorama and West Central Valley school districts both had an individual who had been inside one of their facilities test positive last month, and Public Health Director Jotham Arber says both the districts have worked hard to respond to those situations. He says through the testing and contact tracing conducted, only one other person who was in contact with the Panorama individual tested positive. For West Central Valley Arber states there were four people who ended up testing positive, after the batch of tests that were sent to the state hygienic lab were found to have not been calibrated correctly and had to be reran to determine validity.

Arber says that in situations like with West Central Valley where his staff find possible inaccuracies with test results that they make every effort to scrutinize results to ensure their validity. He reminds the public that COVID-19 is a new virus and can continuously surprise him and other health officials, “We do know now after doing this for six, seven months we can see trends, and those trends and symptoms and onsets and interactions help to guide and make sure that we’re not just using the test as the end-all be-all for positive people. But that we’re actually having clinicians take an honest good look at this and say, ‘Okay, here’s the test, here’s the results, here’s what we’re seeing with this individual.’ Do those all kind of make sense and are we making sure that we’re doing our best to ensure quality with our testing.”

Arber reminds residents that they can contact Guthrie County Public Health at 833-833-4600 about testing for COVID-19 if they are experiencing symptoms or have been in contact in the last 14 days with someone who has tested positive.