A new study shows that mixing the contagious Delta variant and students heading back to school results in an increase in cases among children. Because of the jump in cases, tens of thousands of students have been sent into virtual learning formats.
Since class began in late July, at least 1,000 schools across 31 states have closed because of Covid-19, the Wall Street Journal reported. Burbio, a Pelham, New York data service, is monitoring school closures nationwide for 1,200 districts, including the 200 largest.
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Schools in the Deep South are being hit the hardest, where schools were among the first to open. However, some are looking at the results as a sign of what is to come nationwide.
In Mississippi, 13,715 students have tested positive for the virus. Most schools in the state started the new academic year in early August. As of Aug. 31, more than 20,000 students have been sent into quarantine for each of the past three weeks, according to the state health department.
In New Mexico, nearly 10% of the state's 317,000 students have spent time in quarantine, while in Georgia, more than half of the state's outbreaks for the week that ended Aug. 27 were linked to schools, according to both state's health departments.
In schools where safety protocols are being followed, transmission rates are lower, leaving students in the classroom, not missing out on more valuable education time.
Schools are suffering from not only outbreaks but mass quarantines and staff shortages. This has forced districts to release contingency plans reluctantly.
Some school administrators are responding to the sporadic outbreaks with measures like masking mandates, frequent testing, and vaccine mandates for employees.
"We're not scared of the future necessarily," Cristen Maddux, the spokeswoman for Indian River County School District in Florida, said to the Journal. The district was forced to temporarily shut two elementary schools amid outbreaks.
"The closures have gone very smoothly, and we're just going to take it one day at a time."
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While examining the impact of COVID-19 on schools is complicated with variations in reporting, the Journal found that the number of infections in school-age children has climbed more rapidly in states that have had students in person for weeks.
Throughout the entirety of the country the Delta variant has continued to cause a spike in new cases, similar to the winter spike.
A CDC study released last week shows the Delta variant's effects can rip through a school where safety protocols are not followed, shutting it down and sending students to distance learning.
One Californian elementary school saw an unvaccinated, unmasked teacher with the virus spread COVID-19 to more than half of the students in the teacher's primary classroom in late May. Cases from six students in separate grades, four parents, and another four siblings of students were all linked back to the one teacher for a total of 26 cases.
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With infections continuing to rise and some districts refusing to put safety protocols in place, the number of school-age kids infected with the virus continues to grow, and the number of school closures will continue to rise.
Elizabeth Stuart, the associate dean for education at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, shared that one-way mass closures and quarantines can be minimized is through "test and stay."
The protocol was first used in Massachusetts in which asymptomatic people exposed to a confirmed case take rapid tests daily to monitor for infection instead of being confined to their homes, Stuart said.
"I think that's the kind of creative and technological solution that we're going to need," said Dr. Stuart, "because that balances the Covid risk with the desire to keep kids in in-person learning."
