Virginia Beach schools return to all-virtual learning after coronavirus cases spike
Virginia Beach public schools are returning to all-virtual learning Tuesday after a sudden spike in coronavirus cases was reported Monday.
It means all students will resume virtual learning five days a week. The district had just brought back the remaining five grades — 7th and 8th graders as well grades 10, 11 and 12 — last Thursday.
The system’s reopening plan, one of the most aggressive in the region, has been guided by the status of two metrics throughout eastern Virginia: the number of new cases reported each day and percent of tests that come back positive.
Both metrics have largely hovered in the “yellow zone” — between 26.5 and 264 new cases a day and a positive rate between 5% and 10% — since the first grades returned to school at the end of September.
But the number of new cases each day had been steadily increasing for weeks, increasing from 150 on Oct. 22 to 215 over the weekend.
And then the state reported a record high of 2,677 cases on Monday, with 599 coming from the eastern region. That pushed the seven-day average up to roughly 280 cases and into the “red zone,” which requires all learning to be virtual again.
Peter Coutu, 757-222-5124, peter.coutu@pilotonline.com
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