Covid surge forces schools to close and reinstate pandemic-era measures – and more at risk as millions return to class next week

Schools in two states experiencing a surge in Covid cases have announced they are closing their facilities and moving to remote learning.

Alabama and Tennessee announced two school closures — affecting more than a thousand children — just days into the new school year, with officials saying the virus had forced them to close and conduct a “deep cleaning.”

At one school, children had to abandon their desks and return to remote learning for two days – a move reminiscent of the early days of Covid.

The shutdowns, both in Republican states, came despite a mountain of evidence suggesting they hamper children’s learning, social interactions and ability to develop natural immunity to common infections.

And some fear further disruptions for students are on the horizon in the coming months, with many schools in states including New York, New Jersey and Michigan resuming after Labor Day weekend.

Johnson-Abernathy-Graetz (JAB) High School in Montgomery, Alabama, closed for two days and moved to remote learning just four days into its new term due to a surge in Covid cases

Stigall Elementary School in West Tennessee also closed for a day, just a week into the new school year, for a deep cleaning.

Johnson-Abernathy-Graetz (JAB) High School in Montgomery, Alabama, which has 1,500 students in grades 9-12, made the decision to move to virtual classes just four days into the new school year after 15 teachers contracted COVID-19. There was no data on how many students were infected.

Staff and children were asked to stay home on Wednesday 14 August and Thursday 15 August and follow lessons remotely while deep cleaning was carried out in school buildings.

The school has now reopened and masks and disinfectant wipes are available in each classroom. Wearing a mask is not mandatory.

At Stigall Elementary School, part of the Humboldt school system in west Tennessee, a one-day closure was announced just a week into the new school year due to a “surge” in cases.

All 246 first-graders were ordered to stay home on Tuesday, August 13, while their school was cleaned, with parents forced to either take time off work or hire a babysitter.

A school spokesperson did not reveal how many staff or children had tested positive, saying only that they had seen an “increase”.

Jessica Williamson, a parent of a first-grader at the school, told FOX13, “Everybody’s like, ‘COVID is back, COVID is back.’”

“They are little kids. They tend to put things in their mouths, touch each other and share germs.”

She had to find a babysitter for her daughter for the day, but said she preferred that to seeing her child catch Covid – which could force her to stay home for several days.

Teachers will now also be required to wipe down desks and work surfaces with disinfectant every time students move from one class to another.

Mask-wearing was not made mandatory and other pandemic-era measures, such as social distancing, were not reinstated.

Covid cases have been rising in the United States in recent weeks, likely driven by summer travel and gatherings.

In the week to August 17, the latest figure available, 18% of samples tested positive for the virus, a 40% increase from the previous month.

But those levels are far lower than during the worst days of the pandemic, when the proportion of tests detecting the virus jumped by more than 30%.

Hospitalizations and deaths are also far lower than in previous periods of the pandemic, though slightly up — with experts saying most people now experience only mild illness because of previous immunity from vaccines or infections.

Covid cases have been rising in recent weeks, which experts say is likely driven by summer travel and gatherings

The Covid-related hospitalization rate – 4.4 per 100,000 people – is also well below the peak of 35.4 per 100,000 people reached in 2022, when the Omicron variant was spreading.

This rate is also lower than the rate of 10.9 per 100,000 and 7.7 per 100,000 at the start of 2024.

The data also shows that 696 Covid-related deaths were recorded in the week to July 27, the latest available figures, well below the toll from previous waves and less than a third of the level in January this year, when 2,500 deaths were recorded every seven days.

Several studies have been published since the start of the pandemic warning of the harmful effects of distance learning on children’s development.

These include the Education Recovery Scorecard report, written by researchers from Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins, among others, who analyzed data from 7,800 school districts to determine the impact of remote learning.

The study found that students in districts where remote learning was in place for most of the 2020-2021 school year were, on average, more than half a year behind in math.

For comparison, those who were taught remotely for just over a third of the year lost just over a third of an academic year.

Another study published in early 2022 found that children performed worse in math and reading in 2020 and 2021 than before the pandemic began – after analyzing the results of 7.3 million tests.

In the UK, experts have said lockdowns have caused “lasting and significant” damage to children’s education that could have been avoided.