Spokane County schools see steady decline in COVID-19 cases

Cases of COVID-19 continue to drop steadily in Spokane County schools.

With Gov. Jay Inslee’s deadline for ending the statewide mask mandate still three weeks away, local metrics appeared to make that a realistic goal.

The county’s largest district, Spokane Public Schools, reported on Friday 62 students and staff with a confirmed case of COVID-19 entered a school building this week.

The district also reported that 108 people were quarantined. A week ago, those numbers were 106 and 172, respectively.

The district dashboard showed no schools with more than nine positive cases.

The area’s second-largest district, Central Valley, reported on Friday that it had 70 positive cases among students and staff in the previous seven days. A week earlier, the district had 132 cases.

The Mead School District’s case count also fell by almost half, with positive tests in the previous week dropping from 138 on Feb. 18 to 79 on Friday.

The downward trend was consistent among those districts that updated their dashboards on Friday.

The county’s fourth-largest district, Cheney, reported only 51 cases since Feb. 14 – down from 68 last week – while West Valley’s two-week count fell from 76 to 56.

The East Valley School District saw its lowest numbers in several months: 37 students and staff during the last seven days.

Likewise, Deer Park showed some of the highest numbers, percentagewise, in the county, but the dashboard hasn’t been updated in two weeks. The last update at Deer Park, dated Feb. 11, showed 78 cases in the previous 14 days.

The Nine Mile and Freeman districts each reported one positive case, while Post Falls showed none.

New cases at Coeur d’Alene Public Schools were up slightly this week, from 12 to 18.