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The Troup County School System currently has 71 total cases of COVID-19 between employees and students, according to the latest numbers posted on Friday.

There are 59 students with a positive case of COVID-19 and 12 employees. A total of 223 students were in quarantine due to possible exposure and five employees were quarantined.

Earlier this week, TCSS had 56 total cases of COVID-19 in the school system, so Friday’s numbers were an increase of 15 total cases.

“Our numbers have risen substantially since last week, but we anticipated that. It’s been primarily students and some are contracting it at school and some are at home,” said Superintendent Brian Shumate. “The good news is that we are quarantining a lot less people because they have their masks on most all of the day and/or are vaccinated. This will allow us to continuing having school as normal, at least for now. We will continue to monitor our numbers of positive cases for both students and staff as well as the numbers of quarantined people each day. For now, we’re going to continue with business as usual. I do want to thank our staff for their hard work and the community for their support in keeping us open moving forward this week.”