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Virus closes soup kitchen

WHEELING — The Soup Kitchen of Greater Wheeling announced Monday it was closed this week “as a precautionary measure” after an employee there tested positive for the COVID-19 virus over the weekend.

The closure comes just a day after Wheeling Park High School closed due to three positive COVID cases being reported there this weekend. A number of students and staff who came in contact with the infected persons — at least 50, as of Sunday — are now being quarantined.

Overall in Ohio County, there have been 462 positive cases of COVID as of Monday, according to Howard Gamble, administrator for the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department. There were 10 cases in the county reported between Friday and Sunday.

“That’s a lot, but that’s not tremendous enough for us to say things are out of control,” Gamble said. “It is just that the cases continue.

“During the summer you would have dry spells when you didn’t have any cases. That doesn’t seem to be the case now.”

Closures of schools or other buildings are necessary to keep control of the situation, he said.

At the Soup Kitchen, one worker has tested positive for COVID-19, but that worker had not been at the Soup Kitchen for more than a week, and has had no contact with any others at the Soup Kitchen during that time, according to executive director Becky Shilling-Rodocker.

“Someone came down with symptoms, and did not work last week,” she said. “That person tested for COVID, and it was positive.

“This person is an employee who was not in the Soup Kitchen last week. It is almost impossible they would have obtained the virus from the Soup Kitchen. The Soup Kitchen is not the source of the COVID. But the Soup Kitchen is responding by closing down for a week.”

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