The school year has barely started in Mississippi, but thousands of children are now under quarantine because they were potentially exposed to COVID-19.
Are kids under quarantine in Mississippi?
Mississippi data show close to 4,400 children are under quarantine right now because of COVID-19 exposure, CNN reports.
- The Lamar County School District — which serves more than 10,000 children throughout its school system — saw the largest number of students and staff exposed to COVID-19.
- In that county, 110 students tested positive for COVID-19. As a result, 841 kids had to quarantine, per CNN.
Mississippi’s department of health said it tracked the number of students and staff exposed to COVID-19 in the state’s counties from Aug. 2 to Aug. 6, according to CNN. However, officials said only 43 out of Mississippi’s 82 counties actually submitted reporting on COVID-19 exposure. So there’s a chance more people were exposed.
- “Some schools had already been forced to switch to a hybrid schedule due to the surge,” according to CNN.
What is the latest on COVID and schools?
It’s not surprising to see a school already going into hybrid mode. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told CNBC this week that schools will likely go remote again if proper mitigation efforts aren’t maintained, especially because of the delta variant.
- “This is a much more contagious variant, it might be much more difficult to control this in the school, so the goal should be to keep schools open, and try to keep these measures in place until we see how it goes,” said Gottlieb.
The delta variant may put children at risk for severe illness, as I wrote for the Deseret News. And that’s why schools could face heavy risks this fall, Dr. Richard Besser, former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said earlier this week.
- “I expect that (COVID-19) is going to jump around different classrooms, and schools will be forced to shut down more than they did in fact last year,” he said.