TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) – Let’s face it, the coronavirus isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

And as students and teachers return to schools, the state health department is launching a new way to track COVID-19.

“It allows people to see more information about covid-19 within the school corporation,” said Roni Elder with the Vigo County Health Department. She went over the new data dashboard with us. 

The dashboard will keep track of the number of COVID-19 cases in any school.

With cases starting to appear in Vigo County schools, Elder thinks this tool will be very useful.

“We see every year just with kids going back to school all the things that they pass around in general let alone COVID-19. If one student has COVID-19 and they’re not masking, following proper social distancing, it could spread to everyone they’ve come in contact with within a couple of days,” said Elder. 

Dr. Kristiana Box introduced this new dashboard during a recent briefing with the Indiana governor.

The state health department has access to nearly 500,000 student records from the Indiana Departent of Education.

Elder said this will help them match positive cases in the schools.

“The dashboard will really help parents. The school corporation is not hiding anything from them and they can feel a little comfort
knowing what the numbers are in their child’s schools,” said Elder. 

Dr. Box said this new dashboard could be available as early as September.