A lone Midlands school district has a COVID mask mandate. Does it have fewer cases?

Richland schools appear to be ahead of those in Lexington and Kershaw counties in containing the spread of coronavirus, data show.

While several districts in the S.C. Midlands are seeing over a thousand students out, two places where cases seem to be low is in Lexington 3 and Richland 1.

Lexington 4 in Gaston-Swansea, which has only 3,350 students, has 40 active cases.

Richland 1, the only district in the S.C. Midlands requiring students to wear face masks, has 39 student cases and 223 students in quarantine, according to the district’s website.

While health experts strongly recommend masking in classrooms, it’s unclear what effect masking has had on keeping cases down.

Lexington 3, a small, rural district in Batesburg-Leesville, has fewer than five active COVID-19 cases throughout the district.

Richland 2 in the northeast area has considered a mask mandate, but masks are still optional as the district waits for the S.C. Supreme Court to rule on whether the district can require them.

While Kershaw County schools have received publicity for relatively high case numbers and quarantine rates in schools, Lexington 1 has also seen a surge in cases. In fact, Lexington 1 has more COVID-19 cases, 305, and more students in quarantine, 1,988, than Kershaw.

However, Lexington 1, in the town of Lexington, Gilbert and Pelion areas, has far more students, about 27,000 to Kershaw’s nearly 11,000. In other words, 1 in 15 Lexington 1 students are quarantined.

Lexington-Richland 5 has 804 students, nearly 5% of the student body, in quarantine, according to data from the district’s website. The district has 123 active coronavirus cases, and is one alert level below reverting to online-only classes, The State reported previously. The district includes the Irmo, Dutch Fork and Chapin communities.

Lexington 2 in Cayce-West Columbia didn’t publish the number or percentage of students in quarantine, but the percentage of students who are positive for COVID-19 — 1.2 percent — is slightly higher than that of Lexington 1, which is 1%.

Lexington County overall has had more coronavirus cases than Richland recently, but not by much. In the last two weeks, Richland County has had 2,767 confirmed cases while Lexington County has had 3,013, according to data from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Student enrollment numbers were taken from the district’s COVID-19 dashboard, if they are available, or from the S.C. Department of Education’s 2020 report card. Some numbers or terms may not match up among school districts because data are retrieved from districts’ individual reporting systems.

When districts did not report their own case counts, The State used data from DHEC. DHEC does not report specific numbers when case numbers are below five. People listed as isolated are included in the active positive cases. An active, positive case does not necessarily mean a student or employee contracted coronavirus from school.

Kershaw

• Number of students as of 2020: 10,879
• Number of students who are actively positive: 230
• Percent of students actively positive: 2.1%
• Number of students in quarantine: 1,266
• Percent of students in quarantine: 11.6%
• Number of employees positive: 26
• Number of employees quarantined: 4

Lexington 1

• Students as of 2020: 27,268
• Number of students who are actively positive: 305
• Percent of students actively positive: 1%
• Number of students in quarantine: 1,988
• Percent of students in quarantine: 6.8%
• Number of employees positive: 56
• Number of employees quarantined: 102

Lexington 2

• Number of students as of 2020: 9,003
• Number of students who are actively positive: 104
• Percent of students actively positive: 1.2%
• Number of employees positive: 11

Lexington 3 (DHEC numbers)

• Number of students as of 2020: 2,085
• Number of students who are actively positive: fewer than 5
• Number of employees positive: 0

Lexington 4 (DHEC numbers)

• Students as of 2020: 3,350
• Number of students who are actively positive: 40
• Percent of students actively positive: 1.2%
• Number of employees positive: Between 13-22

Lexington-Richland 5

• Number of students as of 2020: 17,449
• Number of students who are actively positive: 123
• Percent of students actively positive: .7%
• Number of students in quarantine: 804
• Percent of students in quarantine: 4.6%
• Number of employees positive: 15
• Number of employees quarantined: 37

Richland 1

• Number of students as of 2020: 23,284
• Number of students who are actively positive: 39
• Percent of students actively positive: .2%
• Number of students in quarantine: 223
• Percent of students in quarantine: 1%
• Number of employees positive: 8
• Number of employees quarantined: 14

Richland 2*

• Number of students as of 2020: 28,493
• Positive cases: 268
• Close contacts: 651

*Richland 2 case and quarantine numbers are approximate because of how the data are published.

This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 9:42 AM.