Central High School reported nearly 9 percent of its students are currently in isolation or quarantining due to the novel coronavirus, according to the newest data shared on Tuscaloosa City Schools' COVID-19 Tracker.

With 21 confirmed positive cases and 68 total students quarantining, nearly one in eleven Central High students is currently out of school after contracting the virus or coming in contact with a student who did.

In a close second comes Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, which has 28 of its 464 students currently quarantining -- just over 6 percent of its student body. 10 students at the school are confirmed positive cases.

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Northridge Middle School ranks highest for current confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, where 30 of its 779 students have confirmed cases of the virus. All other schools in the TCS system are reporting between 0 and 4 percent of students isolating.

The TCS Board of Education approved a mask mandate in early August for all faculty and students, which is set to expire on September 10. TCS Superintendent Mike Daria promised the Board would revisit the mandate and extend it if necessary before it expired.

Despite the mask mandate, 2.5 percent of all TCS' 10,800 students are currently in isolation or quarantining.

TCS established the COVID Tracker early in the previous school year to be as transparent as possible with students and parents about active cases in the system. The website was taken offline in June 2021, when Daria said that all forthcoming data would be exclusively through the Alabama Department of Public Health.

However, the tracker was reinstated just as the 2021-22 school year began early in August.

Case data has yet to be shared by Tuscaloosa County School System, where no mask mandate is in place. TCSS serves more than 18,000 students in 35 facilities. Data from their school system could be available as early as Thursday once reported by the ADPH.

Stay with The Tuscaloosa Thread for the most up-to-date information on both school systems.

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Alabama COVID-19 Vaccine Breakdown (June 2021)

Each graphic shows how many people are vaccinated in all of Alabama's 67 counties, plus the percentage of vaccinated people versus that county's total population. This data was pulled from the Alabama Department of Public Health, county health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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