A large number of coronavirus outbreaks involving school-age youths identified in recent weeks in Los Angeles County have involved cheerleading and dance teams.
Between July 30 and Aug. 20, there were nine outbreaks among high school cheerleading and dance teams involving 131 students and 100 staff members.
All were associated with indoor camps outside of Los Angeles County that lasted from two to four days.
“All of these camps gathered student athletes from multiple schools, and schools were asked to enforce their own mask policies for those in attendance,” Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. “But that meant that students that did not have a mask policy in place at their school, they did not wear masks.“
Reportedly, many in attendance didn’t wear a mask during cheer and dance activities, Ferrer said.
“Most of the teams with outbreaks also used school and charter buses for transportation to bring students to the camps each day,” she said, and team members were not uniformly wearing masks.
Eight of the nine outbreaks involved teens who shared hotel rooms with two to six others.
There were no hospitalizations or deaths associated with these outbreaks.
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“Our findings from these outbreaks suggest that transmission risk is high with close, sustained unmasked contact between people, especially when they’re engaging in physical exertion. And in this case, most of the activities were happening indoors,” Ferrer said.
During the first three days of this week, officials identified five school outbreaks in the county involving 27 students and three staff members, with 135 others exposed. Last week, when many schools, including those in L.A. Unified, reopened for the fall semester, three outbreaks were identified, with 25 students and 60 staff members infected and 79 others exposed.
“We anticipate an upward trend in outbreaks as our schools have reopened, but we’re continuing to work hard to prevent, investigate and manage them as they happen,” Ferrer said.
She called the numbers “sobering” and said Los Angeles County health officials will continue to enforce strict school quarantine rules.
The county quarantine rules, which are stricter than state guidelines, have raised concerns among some school leaders and parents about academic disruption after thousands of students and staff members were sent home in the opening days of the school year. In the Los Angeles Unified School District alone, 6,500 were in quarantine or isolation the first week of class.
“We have a lot of risk right now,” Ferrer said in her weekly media briefing. “The early data we do have on schools is somewhat sobering.”
