Tompkins County Seeing ‘High Transmission Rate’ of COVID-19; Children Under 12 Make up 20 percent of Recent Cases
(Fred Balfour / WRFI)
ITHACA, NY -- Tompkins County is seeing a high transmission rate of COVID-19, prompting the Health Department to recommend masking in all local schools.
As defined by the CDC, high-transmission of COVID is seeing over 100 positive cases per 100,000 residents over a seven-day period.
According to data from the Tompkins County Health Department, there have been 146 positive cases of COVID-19 in the County over the past 7 days.
That’s due to the Delta Variant’s local dominance.
The more infectious variant accounts for over 90 percent of the recent cases Tompkins County has seen, and it’s causing fully-vaccinated people and children to make up larger proportions of the recent positive COVID cases.
The Health Department reports that children under age 12 have made up nearly 20 percent of total cases since May, but that is just around 1 percent of that age group’s population in Tompkins County.
The Health Department is reemphasizing the mask advisory it issued on Jul 30th. They recommend that masks be worn while indoors around others. They also recommend that students, staff, and faculty mask up as the start of the school year approaches.
CORRECTION:
An earlier version of this story inaccurately reported that the number of children under 12 who have tested positive for COVID-19 only constitute 0.01 percent of that age group's population in Tompkins County.
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