UPDATE: 6:30 p.m. — Tooele High School is among the four schools that will implement a mandatory COVID-19 test for students wishing to return to school in person. The county health department is also strongly recommending masks for students and staff.

The school had more than 2% of its students test positive for COVID-19, triggering the "Test to Stay" protocol as outlined by Utah law.

The requirement for students who must test to stay in school will start Thursday, Sept 16 according to a statement from the Tooele County Health Department. It said:

All students and staff members will participate in the Test to Stay protocol where a negative test is required to return to school. Parents may opt their student out of COVID testing but opting their student out will require them to be out of school for 10 calendar days. Masks are strongly recommended for students and staff for the next 14 calendar days.

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The state health department said they are aware of four schools that have entered the Test to Stay threshold just a few weeks into the school year.

One school was in Tooele County, another was a charter school in Salt Lake County, and two were in Davis County.

Syracuse Elementary conducted their Test to Stay testing on Tuesday and found several additional positive cases by the afternoon.

Utah Department of Health officials said Antelope Elementary has also entered the Test to Stay threshold.

The district is doing the testing at Syracuse Elementary, but said they can only handle a certain number of testing events per week before they will need to pull in help.

“We’d been receiving news of continued rising case counts since the first day of school,” said Lindsay Harris, a parent of four children with three at Syracuse Elementary.

“I believe it was Friday they sent us information about the Test to Stay,” she said.

The testing began Tuesday, and with three negative tests, Harris said her kids were back in class with no disruption.

“My kids and I came in early, we ran out to breakfast while their test was processing, and they came back and were there for the first bell,” she said.

Chris Williams with the Davis County School District said by Tuesday afternoon, the testing had caught a number of new positive cases.

“We found out that fifteen additional students were infected with COVID-19," he said. "That number now is 55. We still are testing right now. We don’t know if that number is going to go any higher.”

The district used school nurses to conduct the testing. Williams said they’re prepared to handle a certain number of Test to Stay events each week.

“We envision that we’re going to be able to handle two schools a week with the amount of school nurses we have," he added. "If we have more schools, we’re going to have to turn to the Davis County Health Department or the state for more people to test students.”

Maggie Graul, program manager for the K-12 testing program at the Utah Department of Health, said they have already been asked to assist with testing at a school in Tooele County.

Brittany Brown, deputy director of COVID-19 testing for the department, said they’ve been preparing for several weeks to help schools with testing and are putting plans in place to free up some of their mobile testing teams.

“Twelve testing teams currently that are able to deploy out at any given point for Test to Stay events from the Utah Department of Health Mobile test team," Brown said. "Each team is able to provide about 400 tests per day.”

For larger schools, multiple teams could be deployed.

Districts have dashboards showing COVID-19 case counts, and the department of health posts those for districts throughout the state on their website here.