The number of COVID-19 cases in local schools this past week was the lowest reported since the end of March while the total count for May was the highest of the school year. 

There was significant news regarding COVID-19 both nationally and in Vermont this week. 

How Vermont tracks the COVID-19 virus will change next week as the Vermont Department of Health plans to end daily updates of its dashboard and instead shift to a weekly report. 

As the United States nears the grim milestone of one million deaths to the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of the virus in Vermont communities remained strong this week. 

Public schools started April break Friday afternoon just as reports of COVID-19 cases hit their highest pace of the school year this week. 

Although Vermont data to track the spread of the COVID-19 virus has become more difficult to come by in recent weeks, several measures of new positive cases show that community spread is increasing once again.  

As Vermont transitions into what is hoped to be the waning days of the COVID-19 pandemic, processes for reporting data and testing continue to evolve. 

Reports of new cases of COVID-19 in Waterbury this week have dropped to one-fifth what they were at the end of January, according to data released Friday by the Vermont Department of Health. 

Following the state and regional trend, COVID-19 cases locally continued to taper off in the past week.

For the second week in a row, Waterbury has logged 42 new cases of COVID-19, according to the latest Vermont Department of Health community data released on Friday. 

The latest release of community COVID-19 data by the Vermont Department of Health shows that case counts in Waterbury have come down to mid-December levels. Meanwhile, three local schools were named recipients of the state’s first grants tied to high vaccination rates among students. 

Although Vermont’s daily COVID-19 cases are dropping, the state’s pandemic total this week surpassed the 100,000 mark for infections, according to the Vermont Department of Health. 

Just a few days into the new plan for Vermont public schools to shift to rapid testing to deal with COVID-19 cases among students and staff and schools are already running low or out of tests and voicing concern about their ability to restock to keep up with demand. 

Barely into the new year two weeks and the COVID-19 pandemic is setting new records across the nation, in Vermont, and locally in Waterbury and its neighboring communities. 

News about the COVID-19 pandemic was plentiful this week with daily record-setting case counts reported by the state along with announcements of booster shots for adolescents, new testing for preschoolers, a federal pilot program to get home tests by mail, and new rules for spectators at local high school sporting events. 

As the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus spreads rapidly across the nation and in Vermont, cases statewide and locally this week have surged to the highest levels of the pandemic. 

With state COVID-19 testing sites closed for the Christmas holiday, a giveaway of take-home tests got a strong response across Vermont with a notice from the Department of Health before 10 a.m. that test kits were already distributed. Meanwhile, new town case data shows Waterbury just recorded the most cases in one week for the entire pandemic.

As families with children in the local public schools received word of three more COVID-19 cases identified on Saturday, the Vermont Department of Health announced that it has confirmed the first case in Vermont attributed to the Omicron variant. 

Waterbury continues to log a steady stream of new COVID-19 cases headed into the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

As Vermont continued this week to set new records for daily COVID-19 cases, Waterbury logged the most cases in a single week since the pandemic began in March 2020.