Colquitt County schools monitoring student COVID-19 rates

(MOULTRIE, GA) – While Colquitt County students were enjoying their Fall Break, the system has been busy working to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

Southwest District Health Director, Dr Charles Ruis says that Colquitt currently has one of the highest rates of cases among students in the area,.

He tells us, “In Colquitt County over the last 14 days, the state has recorded 144 new cases. If you extrapolate that to per 100,000 people, that’s 317 new cases per 100,000 people.”

Dr Ruis believes this could be due to many simply thinking that their symptoms are from other problems, which is leading to many simply going about their day normally.

“I think that it’s easy for the average person to dismiss mild symptoms and say ‘sure I’ve got a runny nose, but I have intermittent allergies, that’s all it is.’ or ‘I have a mild cough, but I don’t feel real bad, so it’s nothing serious,” says Ruis.

The Department of Public Health has been working with the county to increase testing throughout the week, and they’ve seen high numbers each day testing’s been open.

And if need be, they’ll continue to add more testing days.

Dr. Ruis says “We were down to only about two days of testing in Colquitt, and now we’re back up to four days, and we’ll go higher than that if necessary.”