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Mask will now be required at Clanton Middle School and Chilton County High School following COVID-19 cases at the schools.

Chilton County Schools Superintendent Jason Griffin said the number of cases and required isolations from exposure to those who tested positive for coronavirus had reached more than 10 % of the population (students, faculty and staff) at the schools.

“After consultation with the nurse at those schools and the principals, we thought it was necessary,” Griffin said.

Other schools are being monitored and will have masks required if isolations and positive cases exceed 10%, in accordance with the Chilton County Schools back to school health guidelines.

“It is not so much the infections, but we are having a lot of isolations because of contact tracing,” Griffin said. “… We need to do everything we can to mitigate the spread.”

When numbers of isolations go down, Griffin will evaluate whether the mask requirement is still needed.

“It will be dependent on how those COVID numbers and isolations adjust,” he said.

Chilton County as a whole remains in the high risk for COVID-19 with 30.5% of those being tested in the past seven days being positive for COVID-19, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health.