Lane County must slash coronavirus numbers to meet school reopening guidelines

In a press conference Thursday, Lane County Public Health officials reviewed progress toward state school reopening goals.

Heard from a lot of school districts... who plan to start the year with remote learning.

Health officials in lane county say kids could end up back in the classroom... if our weekly case count goes down significantly.

We begin our team coverage with chris lueneburg -- live with the numbers we need to meet... chris?

Matt, renee-- if school started today, students would not be able to walk through these doors under state guidelines.

And while many students will be remote learning this fall -- the good news is that we are meeting at least one major in-person learning requirement... the state is requiring a positivity rate of less than five percent.

Lane county is sitting pretty right now with a rate of 2 percent.

Another requirement is 10 or fewer cases for every 100 thousand people over a seven- day span for three consecutive weeks.

Taking lane county's population into account-- there can only be around 37 cases per week to meet that standard... officials say that for the past 5 weeks.... we've been hovering around*70.

It's not really the number of cases, it's a percentage increase.

What we need to see is a decrease in our overall percentages.

That's what the governor is really looking at, is trying to keep that downward trend."

Davis says these requirements are meant to be a check and balance to the public health system -- and tie into the overall health of the community.

The oregon health authority also recently gave updated information on workplace outbreaks in our area.

We'll have a closer look at 6.

Reporting in eugene, chris lueneburg kezi 9 news.

We continue