LOS ANGELES – Around 130,000 Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) students were absent from school during the first days of the return of the winter holidays due to the wave of cases of COVID-19, powered by the Omicron variant.
Last Tuesday, students and staff from LAUSD, the second largest school district in the United States, were due to return To classes. But the coronavirus pandemic has prevented some 130,000 students of those currently enrolled will perform, the Los Angeles Times reported this Friday.
In addition to students, teacher and employee absences have remained high, so office administrators and substitute teachers have had to work in classrooms.
Alberto Carvalho, the new superintendent of LAUSD, stated at an event this Friday that all District schools are open and that parents will continue to be informed that Los Angeles schools are safe.
“These are safe places due to the protection measures that exist here. Parents must understand that, they must take their children to school”, warned Carvalho in statements collected by the newspaper.
The problems with the return were seen to come after more reports were from 60,000 positive cases among students and employees one day before return.
Last week the LAUSD ordered students and staff to take mandatory COVID-19 testing prior to return to school after winter break.
For Monday afternoon 424,230 students and employees had been tested for COVID-19. The result was not very encouraging, since 65,630 tested positive.
On Tuesday, when schools reopened, 17% of students and 15% of staff tested positive. For Thursday the positives were 17. 6% among the students and 13.3% for workers.
LAUSD has developed an ambitious coronavirus testing system with more than 500,000 mandatory every week.
Los Angeles is experiencing a surge of COVID-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant, and this Friday the county health authorities reported that the previous day 45,076 new cases and 45 deaths, and that 4,230 people remain hospitalized for this cause.
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