ADPH unveils COVID-19 school dashboard

The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) has been working on a new dashboard for school systems across the state to report COVID-19 positive cases for months and finally unveiled the dashboard on Oct. 31.

The dashboard will provide weekly updates on the positive cases the school system has “self-reported” over the previous week.

“The data presented on the new dashboard is self-reported by local education agencies (LEAs) on a weekly basis,” an ADPH statement read. “This data is provisional and subject to change. This data may be different than the information reported by a school, district or other entity due to timing of reporting or other factors.

“ALSDE and ADPH cannot concretely verify and makes no representation regarding the accuracy of the data presented.”

Enterprise Superintendent Greg Faught – who has been providing weekly COVID-19 updates – said that the school would no longer provide those updates and instead will defer to the ADPH dashboard. Enterprise City Schools self reports to ADPH after verifying a COVID-19 positive case.

The ADPH dashboard does not identify the number of cases at a specific school – just the overall school system – and does not differentiate between staff and student cases.

Any schools that report between one and four new cases each week will be listed as “less than five” on the dashboard.

“Decisions regarding reporting this data balance transparency, public health and individual privacy and may change as circumstances change,” Coffee County EMA Director James Brown said. “As the data is reported by the LEAs , ADPH and ALSDE are not able to respond to inquiries. Questions about the data should be directed to the specific LEA.”

According to the dashboard, Enterprise City Schools has reported 17 new cases over the past week. Faught said that ECS has documented a total of 49 student cases dating back to Aug. 6. Coffee County Schools – which is made up of Kinston, Zion Chapel and New Brockton – has reported less than five in the past week.

Coffee County Schools Superintendent Kevin Killingsworth said that the school system had four new cases during the week of Oct. 30 with one Zion Chapel student, one Kinston student and two New Brockton High School students testing positive. Killingsworth said that he will continue to provide weekly updates.

Additionally, Daleville City Schools has also reported less than five cases in the past week.

Ozark City Schools has reported 24 new cases over the past week, Elba City Schools has reported less than five new cases, Dothan City Schools has reported eight new cases and Dale County Schools has not reported numbers to the ADPH.

In total, school systems have reported 722 new cases across the state over the past week. The Birmingham area remains the “hot spot” of new cases in the state, while the Southeast has reported much lower amounts of positive COVID-19 cases.

The school dashboard can be found at https://alpublichealth.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/c6909b3820ae4047b0317fa00abc46fc.