COVID-19 cases are sharply on the rise at local schools amid the surging omicron variant wave, but so far school leaders are reticent on whether they’ll bring back universal masking.

Virus cases have exploded within Warren County Public Schools, where student and staff cases were north of 500 as of the holiday weekend. Within the Bowling Green Independent School District, cases are also up with more than 100 student and staff cases as of Friday afternoon.

On Thursday, WCPS announced in a brief statement that it would close Friday, Jan. 14, and use a nontraditional instruction day “due to an increase in illness and staff availability,” though it did not mention COVID-19 or how many staff were impacted.

Asked if WCPS will return to universal masking – as it has done in the past following escalating COVID-19 cases within its schools – Superintendent Rob Clayton issued the following statement to the Daily News:

“On Oct. 21, 2021, the Warren County Public Schools Board of Education’s members voted to make face coverings optional in school facilities and extra-curricular events, beginning Nov. 1, 2021. At that time, there was a consistent decline in confirmed COVID-19 cases. Since returning from winter break, WCPS has experienced a rise in the number of positive COVID-19 cases amongst students and staff, which mirrors an increase seen throughout our community, state and nation.

“Due to illness and staff availability, WCPS is using an NTI day on Friday, Jan. 14, 2022. Our goal is to return to in-person instruction after the MLK holiday weekend on Tuesday.

“WCPS continues to monitor the same four metrics (local hospital capacity, community incidence rates, district incidence rates and district quarantine numbers) daily and any change in current COVID-19 protocols will be communicated to our school community in as timely a manner as possible.”

Previously, Clayton has said the school district would revisit its response to the pandemic based on those four metrics, but he has not elaborated on what threshold would need to be crossed before policies change. The district also does not publicly report through its online data dashboard its student and staff quarantines related to COVID-19 exposures.

Last week, representatives with the Kentucky Department for Public Health briefed Kentucky school district superintendents about the escalating virus cases seen across the state.

DPH Deputy Commissioner Dr. Connie White joined a webcast to share where the state stands.

In the previous week, more than 52,000 Kentuckians tested positive for the virus, which was the highest one-week total thus far in the pandemic, White said at the time.

“I think you can see why this is alarming to us and to the health care community,” she said, according to a Kentucky Department of Education news release.

Despite that massive surge in cases, the Kentucky Department for Public Health has shortened its recommended quarantine and isolation periods for individuals exposed to and infected with the coronavirus to just five days, provided they continue wearing a well-fitting mask for 10 days afterward.

Additionally, the DPH now says that contact tracing following at-school exposure and quarantine for individuals exposed to COVID-19 at school can be discontinued for school settings requiring universal masking for all individuals.

In an interview earlier last week, BGISD Superintendent Gary Fields said his school district would not change its COVID-19 protocols, including bringing back universal masking, for the time being.

“We’re monitoring the data, but right now we don’t see any reason that our protocols need to change, because our protocols aren’t going to stop community spread,” Fields told the Daily News in an interview Tuesday.