BREAKING: Horseshoe Bend School District Cancels Classes

Early Tuesday morning (Jan. 18) Horseshoe Bend School District made the difficult decision to cancel elementary classes for the remainder of the week due to "staffing shortages" and absent students. The district posted its announcement to Facebook.

Horseshoe Bend School District isn't the only district that has been forced to halt studies due to the pandemic, just last week we shared that McCall-Donnelly School District had to shut down before Caldwell followed suit.

The coronavirus has hit the Treasure Valley hard in recent weeks. Here are the latest case numbers since March of 2020 according to the Central Health District, as of last Thursday, January 13th (when the data is updated weekly).

• Ada County: 79,962 confirmed cases, 817 confirmed deaths
• Boise County: 626 confirmed cases, 8 confirmed deaths
• Elmore County: 3,964 confirmed cases, 49 confirmed deaths
• Valley County: 1,412 confirmed cases, 11 confirmed deaths

The Central Health District notes that these numbers may be higher due to "experiencing a backlog in entry data."

While a lot of these closures seem sudden, it somewhat makes sense when you factor in the holiday season that just passed. With all of the gatherings that likely took place to celebrate the new year, the surge continues to impact the community. According to the Central Health District, symptoms include "fever, chills, coughing, difficulty breathing, fatigue, body aches, loss of taste or smell, congestion or runny nose, nausea, and diarrhea."

CHD also says that symptoms "usually appear in 2-14 days" and it can take "1-3 days" before symptoms start to show.

As we all know by now, that makes it that much more difficult to prevent the spread. As of Friday, January 14th, the aforementioned counties are considered to be in the "high transmission level."