NYC student and staff COVID-19 cases continue to skyrocket, with 38,000 logged in last two weeks
The number of recorded COVID-19 cases among city students and school staff skyrocketed Wednesday as reports of positive test results continued to flood the Situation Room responsible for tracking school cases.
DOE numbers released Wednesday show more than 38,000 positive tests have been reported since schools started break on Dec. 23. That means schools recorded 62% more student and staff cases in just the last two weeks than in the entire first three months of the school year combined, when 23,446 cases were logged.
Nearly 27,000 of the new cases were called into the city’s Situation Room Monday and Tuesday alone. There’s often a lag between the date of a positive test and when it’s reported, and that delay was likely more pronounced during the holiday break, when families and school staff were off.
Department of Education officials say more than 85% of the 27,000 new cases reported Monday and Tuesday trace back to a test taken during winter break, but that wasn’t relayed to the school or situation room until classes came back in session this week.
That means roughly 3,500 of the positive tests were taken on Monday and Tuesday.
It’s also unclear how many of the students and staffers who took a COVID-19 test during the break showed up to school when classes started Monday because they hadn’t yet received their test result. According to new DOE guidelines, students who are exposed to a COVID-infected classmate in school can remain in the building and avoid quarantine as long as they test negative on a rapid test.
The Situation Room is now counting at-home rapid tests for reporting purposes in addition to PCR swabs, boosting the number of cases logged in recent days. The city is also no longer requiring tests to be confirmed before recording them.
Schools reported another 11,300 positive test results between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2, according to data compiled and added up by the Education Department on Wednesday. The DOE didn’t break down the dates of the positive test results for those cases.
City officials and health experts have continued to maintain that the rate of virus spread in schools is lower than in most other settings, and that schools can continue to stay open safely.
But the tidal wave of cases also presents significant logistical challenges for the school system, knocking out scores of staffers with illness or quarantine, and driving down student attendance rates to 67% and 72% on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.
The Education Department hasn’t provided any information on how many school employees were absent those days.
A teacher at Middle School 821 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, estimated that about 70% of the school’s staff was out Tuesday, hampering the school’s ability to provide meaningful teaching.
“This whole idea that kids have to be in the building to get instruction, it’s not happening because so many teachers are getting sick,” the educator said.
Schools chancellor David Banks said on Monday that the DOE was launching a “Command Center” to help schools address staffing issues by deploying substitutes and staffers from the agency’s central offices.
