The school systems all over the world have been trying to make sure that they can be safe enough to have children back in the classroom. It seems like an impossible situation, because we know that children need to be in school for more than one reason, and we are fearful of them contracting COVID-19. Schools have implemented physical distancing and mandatory mask mandates, but that still hasn’t seemed to stop outbreaks from happening in schools.
However, it turns out that New York City may have figured it out, because whatever they are doing seems to be working. Schools in the largest school districts like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago had stayed virtual for as long as possible, but they are starting to welcome students back in the building.
New York City has had in-person classes for three weeks now and what they are seeing is very promising as everyone keeps their fingers crossed that it stays this way. A New York Times analysis showed that they have been able to keep their numbers incredibly low in the schools. They have been doing random testing on students and staff and the results have been released.
They completed a total of 10,676 random tests and only 18 have come back positive. 13 of those positive cases have been teachers, and only 5 of them have been students. This district will continue to do random testing each month, and they will be testing 10-20% of the school body.
If one positive result comes back, a class is likely to be closed. If there are more than one, the whole school will be closed temporarily to get ahead of the cases before it spreads to other students.
While the school district is doing a great job, public health officials still say that it is not enough. They say that in order to catch all outbreaks, you need to be testing at a 50 percent population rate, which the school district is nowhere near. Other experts say that the reason New York City’s school cases are so low is because they have done a great job at stopping outbreaks, which can not be said for other parts of the US.
They also have a high number of students who are doing a hybrid model of in-person and virtual, so their population is not as high as it normally would be. While this may seem like a downer, any news of low cases around children is good news.
Source: NYTimes