LAUSD Students Face New Mask, COVID Testing Requirements
LOS ANGELES, CA — The Los Angeles Unified School District's more than 600,000 students had to begin wearing higher-grade, non-cloth masks starting Monday, and the district extended weekly COVID-19 testing requirements through February in an effort to keep schools open through the Omicron surge. The district will provide the mandated masks to students and staffers in need.
The new mask mandate comes two weeks after roughly 65,000 Los Angeles County students and staffers returned from winter break only to test positive for the coronavirus, according to the county Department of Public Health. To limit classroom outbreaks, students in the Los Angeles Unified School District must now wear "well-fitting, non-cloth masks with a nose wire" at all times, indoors and outdoors. District employees were already required to wear surgical-grade masks.
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As with the previous masking requirements, the mask requirements do not apply to people with mask exemptions.
More than any other major school district in the nation, LAUSD has invested in coronavirus testing since students returned to in-person learning. Amid the Omicron surge in which most cases are mild and transmission rates hit an all-time high, the testing policy has identified a staggering number of seemingly asymptomatic cases. Since the ned of winter break, 13 percent of students tested positive for COVID-19.
Weekly COVID-19 testing for students and employees regardless of vaccination status was previously going to be required through the end of January, then required only of unvaccinated people. But it will now continue for everyone through February.
For information on testing centers and to make a COVID-19 test appointment at a Los Angeles Unified site, visit lausd.net/covidtestingappt or call the Family Help Desk at 213-443-1300. While appointments are encouraged, no appointment is needed.
School district officials also note that vaccinations remain a key element in reducing the impact of COVID-19 on individuals and communities and will be required for students 12 and older at the start of the fall semester of 2022.
For more details about LAUSD's COVID-19 guidelines, visit https://achieve.lausd.net/spring2022.
City News Service contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on the Los Angeles Patch
