Waco, Texas /
A downtown Texas school district closed schools for the rest of the week due to the deaths of two teachers by covid-19 last week.
Connally Independent School District (CISD) officials, where the city of Waco is located, close the five suburban schools in Waco after the death by covid-19 of Natalia Chansler, 41, a sixth-grade social studies teacher at Connally High School, said Deputy Superintendent Jill Bottelberghe.
Days earlier, David McCormick, 59, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Connally High School, also died from covid-19. It was unknown at this time whether they were vaccinated. Authorities plan to reopen the nurseries after Labor Day in the United States, which is Sept. 6.
High school football coach Terry Gerik said the Cadets they will play against La Vega school on Friday night as scheduled.
The school has 51 confirmed cases of covid-19 since classes began on Aug. 18, Bottelberghe said Monday. More cases were confirmed in recent days, the official pointed out, but said she did not know if any of the cases had been linked to Chansler.
“No correlations found” between the two deaths, Bottelberghe said. “They taught in two different grades even though they worked under the same content area, but we recognized an increase in the spread to our students in those two grades.”
In an email Monday, Superintendent Wesley Holt said the hope “is that closing and the holiday will give those who are positive for viruses or expose others to viruses time to isolate and recover. This closure will also allow a deep cleaning and sanitization of all CISD facilities“.
The average number of new daily cases of covid-19 in Texas over the past seven days was 15,400 through Sunday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The daily average death rate for covid-19 in Texas in the same period was 200.
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