Justice

WHEELING — The new COVID-19 school map has been released, and Ohio County is gold, meaning students will be in school four days next week barring enough cases to turn the county red.

The school map contradicts the county-level map issued at 10 a.m. Saturday, which showed the county as yellow, meaning it had less than 10 cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days.

The county, as gold, means in-person classes can be held. Ohio County plans to return to in-person instruction this week on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

Sports is a different story, though, as gold counties have two options: no sports at all or contests only against other gold counties. This means that Wheeling Park’s boys and girls soccer teams will be unable to play for an Ohio Valley Athletic Conference title this week.

Each week, the COVID-19 Data Review Panel verifies data used to inform the WVDE School Alert System Map to ensure both accuracy and reliability.

For the panel’s review, data from the DHHR’s County Alert Map as of Thursday night was captured and thoroughly analyzed. This may result in differences between the WVDE map and the DHHR County Alert Map.

The county color announced each Saturday at 5 p.m. will be in effect until the following Saturday at the same time. The only exception is if a county turns red during the week. That change would be made immediately to the WVDE map because all in-person instruction and extracurricular and athletic activities would be suspended.

All schools, both public and private, are expected to adhere to the WVDE School Alert System map to guide in-person instruction and extracurricular activities.

Red (Substantial Community Transmission): Counties must move to remote learning. No extracurricular competitions or practices are permitted. Staff may report to their schools, as determined by the county. Essential support services, including special education and meals, will continue. Red counties include Fayette, Kanawha, Mingo and Putnam.

Orange (Heightened Community Transmission): Remote learning required. Extracurricular activities are limited to conditioning only and sport-specific practicing is not permitted. Marching band is limited to outdoors only.

Staff may report to their schools, as determined by the county. Essential support services, including special education and meals, will continue. Orange counties include Boone and Monongalia.

Gold (Elevated Community Transmission): In-person instruction permitted with increased mitigations including face coverings for children grades 3 and above at all times. Extracurricular activities are permitted in-county (with schools from the same county) and with other gold counties. The counties are Logan, Ohio and Wyoming.

Yellow (Increased Community Transmission): Counties will continue with in-person instruction. Extracurricular practices and competitions may occur. Health and safety precautions include, at a minimum, face coverings at all times for grades 6 and above. Yellow counties include Barbour, Berkeley, Calhoun, Clay, Doddridge, Grant, Hampshire, Hancock, Harrison, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Marion, Marshall, Mason, Mercer, Mineral, Monroe, Morgan, Nicholas, Pendleton, Raleigh, Roane, Summers, Tucker and Wayne.

Green (Minimal Community Transmission): Extracurricular practices and competitions may occur. Health and safety precautions include, at a minimum, face coverings in grades 3 and above when students are outside of core groups and in congregant settings and on school buses.

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4 New Cases in Marshall County

The Marshall County Health Department announced four new cases of COVID-19 in the county over the weekend.