RALEIGH, NC – Health officials in North Carolina on Tuesday released a report showing 170 ongoing COVID-19 clusters in K-12 schools or daycare centers.
Although the state Department of Health and Human Services said it has no data on the number of students in quarantine across the state or the proportion of those forced to miss school without an option. remote learning, districts without mask dressing requirements are seeing a substantially greater spread of the virus and hours of lost learning among students.
Union County public schools, which rejected a proposal last month to require the use of masks in the state’s sixth-largest public school district, reported that approximately one in eight of the state’s more than 41,000 students. district were in quarantine, as of Friday. More than 5,200 students were quarantined after 337 students tested positive for the virus last week.
Meanwhile, the Wake County public school system, where masks are mandatory and four times larger than Union County public schools, has less than a quarter of the number of students in quarantine. Wake County District data show that fewer than 1,300 of its more than 161,000 students were quarantined last week.
In Durham County, where face-to-face coverage is also mandatory, the public school district with about 31,000 in-person learners reported 97 new cases among students last week.
The weekly state health officials report updated Tuesday shows Monroe’s Union Academy Charter School has the worst group in North Carolina, with 111 positive cases, including 98 among children. This means that approximately one in 20 students at the charter school is infected. Brunswick County Charter Day School has the next highest group of 81 infected children, followed at a distance by Bladen County Emereau Charter School with 31 infections among students.