Union County Public Schools no longer posting weekly COVID-19 dashboard

UNION COUNTY, N.C. — Union County Public Schools posted on their website that they will no longer publish a weekly COVID-19 dashboard.

The district said beginning Jan. 7, anyone looking for that information would need to get it from the county’s health department, the state health department, and the CDC.

The district said they will still pass on some information to families.

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“Families will continue to receive daily communication when positive, impactful COVID-19 cases are reported at their child’s school,” UCPS said in their statement.

The school district referred families to the data available on the dashboard for the county’s health department, the dashboard for the state health department, and the CDC’s data tracker.

“Due to constant changes in the StrongSchoolsNC Toolkit and the five-day quarantine period, more accurate data is available through Union County Public Health, the State of North Carolina and the Centers for Disease Control,” the district said in a statement to Channel 9.

The district’s announcement comes in the wake of a nationwide spike in COVID-19 cases. North Carolina reported a record amount of new COVID-19 cases Friday, the day after hitting a record in the same category.

On Friday, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported 28,474 new COVID-19 cases. For context, that’s 4,200 more cases than were reported Thursday, and a continuation of the steadily rising number of cases in the state. Friday’s number is the third consecutive day of more than 20,000 reported cases in the state and the ninth consecutive day of more than 10,000 new cases.

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