The massive testing effort aims to keep students in school even as the omicron variant has been rapidly lifting national case counts to record-breaking levels.
“I know the anxiety is high,” Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Pedro Martinez said on Thursday. “As long as we continue to work together with our parents we are going to get through this surge.”
Chicago’s daily COVID-19 positivity rate has topped 17%. Schools that are taking proper precautions are not primary drivers of cases, but the rate among children is likely to reflect that in the community, according to Chicago Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady. In New York, students in the nation’s largest school system are set to return to in-person classes on Monday. New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams, who is set to be sworn in early Saturday, Gov. Kathy Hochul and outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan this week to double testing of schoolchildren and to send home millions of tests to ensure the safe resumption of classes.
Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest, will continue with weekly COVID testing for all students when they return on Jan. 10. At the end of the month, that policy will change and the district will only test the unvaccinated every week. The patchwork of testing measures across the country shows the lack of a unified federal policy on COVID-19 prevention, said Emily Landon, a professor who specializes in infectious diseases at the University of Chicago Medicine. States, cities and districts are scrambling to figure out the best way to prevent the spread and keep classrooms open, she said.
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