COVID clusters reported at 28 Triangle schools, including 52 at a Wake charter school
Updated with Cardinal Charter saying there are no active clusters at the school.
Nearly 30 Triangle public and private schools are reporting COVID-19 clusters, including a charter school in Wake County that’s reporting more than 50 cases.
Twenty-eight schools have active COVID-19 clusters, according to the latest state Department of Health and Human Services report released Tuesday. By far the largest total in the Triangle on the new state report is Cardinal Charter Academy at Wendell Falls, which is now listed at 52 cases. That’s up from 20 cases listed in last week’s DHHS report.
The report lists clusters at 13 schools in Wake County, six in Durham, three in Orange County and two schools each in Franklin and Granville counties. Chatham and Harnett counties each had one active cluster listed.
Cardinal Charter is one of six schools statewide reporting 40 or more COVID cases in the latest state report. Person County, which is about 60 miles north of Raleigh, had three schools with more than 30 cases: Southern Middle (53), Person High (50) and Northern Middle (37).
Cardinal Charter leaders reassured parents at the board of directors meeting on Wednesday that there are no longer any active cases at the school and that all the affected students are back on campus. School leaders said there’s a backlog with the county updating the state report.
“We feel that the action that we took in cooperation with the Health Department, we feel that helped to mitigate the infection that was going on,” said Frank Pistella, Cardinal Charter’s principal.
Schools are dealing with the delta variant, a mutation of the coronavirus that’s more than twice as contagious as the original strain, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There’s a time lag between when cases are identified and when they are listed on the state report. Schools may currently have more or less COVID cases than are shown by DHHS. A cluster is defined as five or more linked cases in a 14-day period.
Clusters in multiple area schools
In the Wake County school system, clusters were reported at Athens Drive High, Holly Grove Elementary, Knightdale High, Neuse River Middle, Sanderson High, Southeast Raleigh High, Vandora Springs Elementary and Wendell Elementary.
Sanderson High has the most cases of any school in the district on the report at 21. The only other district school in the report that was listed with more than 10 cases was Neuse River Middle at 16.
In addition to Cardinal Charter, two other Wake County charter schools are on the state report. Endeavor Charter School is listed with 29 cases and East Wake Academy has six cases listed.
Two Wake County private schools are also listed: Chesterbrook Academy North Raleigh and GRACE Christian School.
The report also shows ongoing clusters at Bethesda Elementary, Eno Valley Elementary, Northern High and Rogers-Herr Middle in Durham Public Schools. Two Durham private schools were also listed: The Duke School and Immaculata Catholic School.
Two schools in the Orange County schools are on the state report: Central Elementary and New Hope Elementary. Franklin Porter Graham Elementary, which is part of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system, is listed on the state report with 17 cases.
Clusters were also shown at Crosscreek Charter and Franklinton Middle in Franklin County and Falls Lake Academy and JF Webb High in Granville County.
Clusters were also found at Chatham Central High in Chatham County and Anderson Creek Primary in Harnett County.
This story was originally published October 5, 2021 at 4:23 PM.
