GERING, Neb. (AP) - Several western Nebraska schools are scrambling to deal with outbreaks of new coronavirus cases.
About 70 students and staff at Gering High School were under quarantine this week after an outbreak, the Scottsbluff Star-Herald reported. That came after at least four cases were confirmed last week in the school. School officials have since temporarily ended a policy allowing people to opt-out of wearing masks inside its high school and on school buses, and officials postponed the homecoming dance until Oct. 17.
Neighboring Scottsbluff Public Schools has had nine confirmed cases and 113 quarantines across its buildings, the Star-Herald reported. And in Alliance, the high school football game was canceled last week after a student tested positive and several team members were quarantined.
The state's online virus tracker shows 42,278 in Nebraska have tested positive for the virus and 462 people have died since the outbreak began. Those numbers include nearly 500 new cases on Wednesday alone.
The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Nebraska has soared over the past two weeks, to 402 new cases per day in the last week from nearly 272 cases per day the week prior, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 tracking project.