More than 20 Kennewick students quarantined after classmates test COVID positive

Twenty-one Kennewick elementary students are now quarantining at home after two classmates came down with COVID-19.

The Benton Franklin Health District directed the school administrators to keep two groups of students from Edison Elementary at home for 14 days as a precaution to keep the highly contagious virus from spreading to classmates.

The two children who tested positive for COVID had been in class with their peers during last week, and had close contact with their fellow students and teachers, according to the district.

If they don’t show any symptoms they’ll be back in class before the end of the month. If they feel sick, they’ll have to wait for 10 days after symptoms started and 24 hours after their fever breaks.

The district also cleaned, disinfected and ventilated the areas where the students were.

The two students were among 12 new employee and student COVID cases reported Monday on the Kennewick district’s online dashboard.

Eight of them were students, including the two at Edison Elementary, one at Cottonwood Elementary, three at Lincoln Elementary, one at Hawthorne Elementary and one at the Benton-Franklin Juvenile Justice Center day program.

Three staff members that work at Cottonwood, Amon Creek, Sunset View, Desert Hills and Park Middle School also had tested positive.

And one adult not employed by the district spent time at Mid-Columbia Partnership and was reported sick.

It was the largest single-day increase at the district since it started reporting at the beginning of the school year. Since August, the district reported a total of 57 cases, more than two-thirds of them have come since Oct. 26.

Pasco, which started classes last week, and Richland, where more elementary students are expected to return this week, did not see similar increases.

Pasco reported need to clean one classroom in Ray Reynolds Middle School after a student was sick. The district has had 43 cases.

Richland reported Monday that two Tapteal students tested positive. It’s reported 15 total cases.

Both counties are seeing a spike in cases that are being attributed to social gatherings in the community. The upward trend also includes school-aged children, according to the Benton Franklin Health District.