Many Seattle area schools have stopped publicly tracking Covid cases, despite imminent fall surge

School districts across King County have changed how they’re reporting Covid cases this year, following updated guidance from the state.

Previously, many districts published online dashboards tracking the number of current Covid cases among students and staff. At the time, districts were required to publicly report any Covid cases, whether a student self-reported testing positive or they took a test at school.

Now, districts are only required to report cases from in-school testing to the state, and some have stopped updating public dashboards.

The Seattle, Lake Washington, and Northshore school districts retired their public Covid data dashboards at the end of last school year. Meanwhile, the districts in Federal Way, Bellevue, and Issaquah have continued to update their dashboards.

The changes come as Covid hospitalization rates have been on the rise across the nation and Washington. Earlier this month, state officials warned that Covid, RSV, and flu combined are expected to cause a surge in infections this fall and winter — though it won’t get as bad as it was in 2021.

Since the school year began, Issaquah has recorded 259 cases in its schools, Bellevue reports 162 cases, and Federal Way has had 122.

Northshore spokesperson Carrie Campbell said in a statement that the district has stopped updating its dashboard so that staff can focus on preventing the spread of Covid. One example: The district is hosting flu and Covid vaccine clinics for students, families, and staff this week.

In Lake Washington, district officials say they decided to discontinue the dashboard because of waning public interest and a reduction in the number of cases to report. Between September 2022 and May 2023, page views of the dashboard decreased by more than 75%, said spokesperson Shannon Parthemer.

Seattle has not yet responded to a question about why the district stopped updating its dashboard.

Seattle’s dashboard logged the total number of cases every week, broken down by students, staff, and district region. When it was last updated on June 30, the week’s total Covid cases stood at 25 — a tiny fraction of the district’s roughly 50,000 students and 7,500 employees.

District officials in Seattle, Lake Washington, and Northshore say they still encourage families and staff to report Covid cases to their school.

Seattle school leaders are asked to track when a student’s absence is due to Covid, which gives the district “some insight” into spread at individual schools. District leaders can still decide to require testing and masking if there’s a suspected or confirmed outbreak in a classroom or school.

Lake Washington asks families and staff members to help them track Covid cases by completing an online survey if a student tests positive.

The form asks which school the student attends or the staff member works at, the date they were last in any district building, which symptoms they’ve experienced and when they started, and who might be considered a close contact, among other questions.

The state still requires districts to track and report suspected outbreaks. Under the state’s definition, an outbreak is when there are at least five positive Covid cases — or at least 20% of students, teachers, or staff — within a specified “core group.” Those include a classroom, cohort group, participants of an extracurricular activity, or before and after school care.

Bellevue reported two outbreaks this month.