School is being held throughout the St. Louis area, and after the first week, some areas have already quarantined hundreds of students. According to the latest COVID data, the Fort Zumwalt school district in O’Fallon has reported sending more than 460 students home to quarantine — with hundreds of cases reported in just the past two days.
by county COVID dashboard, 82 students and 17 staff members have tested positive since classes began last week. But as School spokesperson Pointing to Fox 2, the rise in isolated students represents a “small percentage” of the district’s 17,000 students and “doesn’t affect the continuation of the school.”
While most areas in the region Asking teachers and students to wear masks indoors Regardless of vaccination status, Fort Zumwalt announced an optional mask policy before school starts, stating that it will support “an environment in which those who choose to wear masks are comfortable and those who are not safe.”
The Francis Howell School District, which enrolls about 16,000 students in St. Charles, uses a policy that makes mask disguise a requirement only for students in sixth grade and under – a reflection of the vaccine’s ineligibility for those younger than twelve, Explain the school’s website.
A quick look at the data reported since the first day of school last week indicates that there are relatively fewer quarantine cases in similarly sized schools using universal mask requirements. However, not all regions update their public data portals every five minutes, as does the Fort Zumwalt dashboard, making direct comparisons unavailable in some cases.
For example, as of August 26, the St. Louis School District, with its 19,200 students, reports a total of 210 students in quarantine, with about 76 percent of contact-related cases at the school, where mask requirements apply. None of the 47 positive COVID cases among students related to contact within the school have been reported.
In the Rockwood School District, which also has a mask-use mandate, 96 students have been reported to have been isolated over the past seven days, during which time 25 students have tested positive for COVID. With an enrollment of 21,000, Rockwood is one of the largest school districts in the state.
Meanwhile, in the 17,500-student Parkway School District in western St. Louis County, 29 students tested positive and 145 were quarantined during the first week of classes; Since August 29, the county’s COVID dashboard has reported 73 more students in quarantine and eleven positive cases.
Follow Danny Wicentowski on Twitter at Tweet embed. Email the author at Danny.Wicentowski@RiverfrontTimes.com
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