Clermont and Brown counties were red again on the Ohio Department of Health's newest statewide COVID-19 heat map, unveiled Thursday afternoon during Gov. Mike DeWine's COVID-19 briefing. With a small number of exceptions, almost every district inside is still planning to return to an in-person, five-day school week for the fall semester.
DeWine's presentation included a short segment in which he overlaid the "red" counties — those on the third level of Ohio's four-tier, color-coded COVID-19 alert system — with a map showing school districts' plans to reopen, whether in-person, remotely or with a hybrid learning plan that involves some of both.
Although some of them, including Brown and Clermont, plan for a mostly or fully in-person return to learning, DeWine said he did not plan to issue government orders beyond the existing K-12 masking requirement and would leave most health questions to individual districts.
"I’m pointing this map out kind of for us, for people in the community," he said. "We have a job to do. Our job is to slow down the spread in the community so the school can either open or the school can stay open."
