By Tim Mastro

DOVER — Delaware’s K-12 public schools posted their second-highest total this academic year of in-person contagious COVID-19 cases among students over a seven-day period, according to the Delaware Division of Public Health’s weekly report.

The data, which has 473 cases for students and also shows 114 cases among staff, was tracked Dec. 4-10. It represents 0.34% of the estimated 141,040 public school students — up from 0.24% (342 cases) the previous week.

The only week to have more in-person contagious cases was Oct. 2-8 when there were 483.

The state has recorded a total of 4,347 in-person contagious cases among students this school year — 3% of all public school students. An additional 892 cases have been reported among staff.

Masks have been required in schools since the beginning of the academic year, per an order from Gov. John Carney. This order was recently extended to Feb. 8 when Gov. Carney said it will be reevaluated based on what COVID-19 case rates and vaccination rates look like at that time.

Gov. Carney said at a press briefing in early December the state is pleased with the low percentage of in-person contagious cases so far this year.

“I think the most important thing is we haven’t seen much spread in schools,” Gov. Carney said.“I think that’s the biggest fear, the biggest challenge and the biggest rationale to continue having our students wearing masks while in school, because we know they are in very close contact to one another.”

In-person contagious cases are defined as “persons who were present at school as far back as 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms (or test date if no symptoms). The source of infection of these cases cannot be attributed to schools, nor is it known that they are the source of infection to others in schools.”

The data published on the state’s coronavirus website is for all Delaware public schools, including 19 districts and 23 charter schools, which are part of the public school system.

It might differ from data on school district’s websites as the districts usually include the total number of positive cases and individuals in quarantine in their data while the state’s data dashboard only included the schools’ in-person contagious cases.

Private school data is still not available and will be released when those schools’ enrollment information finalized.

More than 200 schools have enrolled in the state’s “Test to Stay” program which is a voluntary program where students can sign up to be tested for COVID-19 weekly.

“Kids maybe become positive at home or other gatherings, other settings, this school testing can really help identify who is positive to help prevent the spread,” said DPH director Dr. Karyl Rattay. “We do think that is helping and we’d love to see enrollment higher in the testing program, but we’re pleased with how it is going so far.”