With COVID-19 surging, US schools suspend in-person education

With COVID-19 cases and hospitalisations in the state spiking to record levels, bus drivers and teachers in quarantine, students getting sick and the holidays looming, Schools Superintendent Scott Hanback in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, made a tough decision this week.

The school system, he decreed, would switch to remote learning until after Thanksgiving.

It seemed like the only safe way to proceed after the myriad disruptions caused by the surging coronavirus.

’’It has been very, very difficult,” Hanback said, adding that he has been doing ‘’a lot of prayer, rest and trying to just take care of my mental health and physical health just so I can stay sharp.’’

Facing equally grim conditions, school systems around the US and abroad are taking similarly tough action.

Boston, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia are among those that are closing classrooms or abandoning plans to offer in-person classes later in the school year, and New York City may be next.

Such decisions are complicated by a host of conflicting concerns — namely, safety versus the potential educational and economic damage from schooling children at home, in front of computers, under their parents’ supervision.

Virus transmission does not appear to be rampant within schools themselves.

Instead, many of the infections that are proving so disruptive are believed to be occurring out in the community.

Educators fear things could get worse during upcoming holiday breaks, when students and staff gather with family and friends or travel to other hot spots.

The nation has entered “an extremely high-risk period,” said experts at PolicyLab, a Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia team that develops guidance.

They shifted their advice this week, advocating online-only instruction for areas with rapidly rising rates, at least until after Thanksgiving.

Newly confirmed infections per day in the US are shattering records at nearly every turn, hitting more than 153,000 on Thursday and pushing the running total in the US to about 10.5 million, with about a quarter-million deaths, by Johns Hopkins University’s count.

The number of people now in the hospital reached an all-time high of over 67,000 on Thursday, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

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