"While case rates rose among children in all age groups between mid-July and mid-August, they have since declined in all age groups,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said of a summer COVID-19 spike among children.
Ferrer added that it’s important to consider testing numbers in relation to the increase in cases.
“Children in the country account for more than a quarter of positive cases reported in the last week,” she said. “That number should not be a surprise, considering that the Los Angeles Unified School District is doing nearly 100,000 tests every day.”
Overall, Ferrer said few positives have been recorded among staff and students.
“About .5 percent of our student body and about .7 percent of our staff have become infected since school districts reopened,” Ferrer said.
“This does not imply that the infections happened in schools. Many of the infections happened before students came to school.”
This week the LAUSD board of educators voted to require COVID-19 vaccinations for all eligible students 12 and older.
The mandate is now in effect and students will have to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 10, 2022 in order to attend in-person classes.
“We probably have about 80,000 students that might be unvaccinated,” Interim Superintendent Megan Reilly said, adding that school officials will soon reach out to families to notify them of the mandate.
Students who are not eligible before Jan. 10 will also face the requirement if they’re turning 12 in 2022. They will have to have proof of vaccination no later than eight weeks after their birthday.
When asked about potential legal challenges, Reilly said, “We fully anticipate that some people are not happy with this decision or have some complaints about that, but that just comes with the controversy over this territory. We feel very firm in the science.”
L.A. County currently requires any close contact of an infected person to quarantine. The rule is stricter than current state guidelines, which say if both people were masked at the time of interaction, then the close contact can continue going to school if they show no symptoms.
Ferrer said the county may relax its strict school quarantine policy after reviewing on-campus transmission data for the first four weeks of the school year.
To stay up to date on COVID-19 in LAUSD schools, take a look at the district’s COVID -19 Testing School Report Card. The dashboard provides daily updates on the reopening status and COVID testing results in each of the district’s schools.
As of Sept. 8, the LAUSD report card has recorded 1,475 active cases in the district. Four are school-linked and 1,471 are community-based.
The parent advocacy group Parents Supporting Teachers has also created a dashboard for parents and staff to follow. To view, click here.
