Children, teens driving surge of new Covid cases in El Paso
EL PASO, Texas — School-age children were responsible for almost half of the past week’s Covid cases in El Paso County, according to the public health authority.
Of the 827 new cases reported in this week’s Covid data released by the city on Monday, almost 400 of them were children in the 0 to 17 age group.
The biggest contributor to positive cases in this group is high school students between 15 and 18-years-old.
At Parkland Middle School in northeast El Paso, there were five days of at least one person testing positive in the past two weeks. In that same time, at least 30 kids came into close contact with someone with Covid.
“It’s a little worrisome,” Madison Cannon-Dingle, a mother of a Parkland student, said.
Her daughter, 12, is vaccinated, but an outbreak within the 8th grade volleyball team created a scare for the family. Madison-Dingle’s daughter is on the 7th grade volleyball team and had to be out for three days for Covid protocol.
“We were out until probably like 9:30 or 9:45 waiting for the rapid test results because she was really scared,” Cannon-Dingle explained.
El Paso City/County Health Authority Dr. Hector Ocaranza told County Commissioners Monday that masks, vaccinations, and public health interventions are the tools needed to slow down the transmission at schools.
