Coronavirus cases resulted in 6,500 students missing one or more days during the first week of school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, as officials responded to early results from the largest school-based coronavirus testing effort in the nation.
About 3,000 students were in isolation because they tested positive for an infection either during the first week or in the days before the Aug. 16 start of classes. An additional 3,500 were in quarantine after they were identified as close contacts of those who tested positive. About 451,000 preschool through 12th-grade students are attending Los Angeles public schools in person this fall. More than 10,000 others are attending classes online through an independent study option.
Among some 60,000 employees tested, about 1,000 missed at least one day of work because of an infection or because they were in close contact with an infected person.
L.A. Unified officials say they know of no cases that were transmitted from one person to another while on a campus since the start of school, although some parents have openly questioned that claim. At the moment, the Los Angeles County health department does not have any L.A. Unified campus on its list of schools with potential outbreaks.
The district released the data in response to a request from The Times and as part of a presentation Tuesday to the Board of Education.
Overall, the impact of these absences was relatively small across the nation’s second-largest school system. About 1 in every 700 students had to be in isolation or in quarantine.
The district also released numbers on positive student and staff tests during the first week of school, cases identified as part of the district’s mandatory weekly testing program. Beginning the week of Aug. 16, about 2,000 students and 200 district employees tested positive. District officials said the number is not precise because data are being updated frequently as test samples are processed.
The figures were updated Monday and are higher than numbers that were reported in the first iteration of a database created by the outside group Parents Supporting Teachers, which used Sunday data.
The district also released the infection rates for the first week of school. About 6 in every 1,000 students tested positive for the coronavirus; about 4 in every 1,000 employees. This rate is lower than during “baseline” testing conducted Aug. 2-15 and could indicate a leveling off of the Delta variant in the communities served by L.A. Unified.
Earlier district testing had shown a steady rise in infection rates over the course of the summer, from about 1 in 1,000 students to about 8 in 1,000 students by early to mid-August.
Some campuses dealt with no or few cases, but the impact was concentrated in other areas. Overland Elementary School on the Westside, for example, had six cases and sent home four entire classrooms, according to information provided to parents by the school administration in emails.
From the standpoint of the school, isolation and quarantine are similar; either way, the affected individual is not at school for a set period of time. An isolated person is someone who is experiencing symptoms of illness or has tested positive for a coronavirus infection. A quarantined person has been in close contact with someone who tested positive.
L.A. Unified revised its rules Monday to enable more students to avoid quarantine. Administrators had been sending home all close contacts of an infected person. Under the new policy, vaccinated students who are close contacts do not have to quarantine unless they develop symptoms, although district officials also recommend getting tested five days after exposure. The district’s new policy aligns with that of L.A. County.
“I’m glad to see this districtwide update that differentiates procedures for vaccinated versus unvaccinated members of our school communities,” said school board member Nick Melvoin. The district’s policies should “follow the science and align with public health guidance.”
A close contact is any person who was within six feet of a person with a coronavirius infection for at least 15 minutes within a 24-hour period.
The stay-home rules affected many people even if they tested positive before the start of school. That’s because an isolation period, for example, extends for at least 10 days.
Officials also released attendance rates for the first week of school. On the first day, about 84% of those expected were in class for the in-person program. That figure is lower than normal, but it could have been worse: About one in five students had not taken a required coronavirus test in advance. The district managed to get many of those students quickly tested and into their classes on the same day.
The attendance rate gradually rose through the week to a high of about 88% on Thursday before dipping on Friday.
