Covid chaos in classrooms: Kentucky school district sends students home less than two weeks into year due to ‘tripledemic’ of Covid, flu and strep outbreaks
- The school has closed its doors after nearly one in five students reported sick
- Fourteen staff members were also on leave due to Covid, laryngitis and flu
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A Kentucky school district canceled classes shortly after reopening after large numbers of students were hit by a “triple-demic” of flu, Covid-19 and strep throat outbreaks.
The district has closed its doors less than two weeks after it reopened after nearly a fifth of students called in sick.
Lee County School District, which serves just under 900 students in the eastern part of the state, reopened after summer break on Aug. 9.
But by the end of the first week, nearly one in five students had called in sick due to Covid, laryngitis, flu or other illnesses. Fourteen employees were also on leave.
Lee County Elementary School in Beattyville, Kentucky
Dr. Danny Benjamin, a pediatrician at Duke University, told NBC News it’s still early in the year to see a major flu outbreak
The graph above shows the percentage of positive Covid cases (brown line) and the weekly number of new Covid hospital admissions (blue bars)
When attendance failed to improve early the following week, the school decided to close Tuesday and Wednesday.
Distance learning will take place today and tomorrow. It is not clear when face-to-face classes are expected to resume.
All extracurricular activities, including sports and games, have also been canceled for a thorough cleaning of the school.
Chief Inspector Earl Ray Schuler said: ‘We disinfect our buses and our buildings and give our staff and students time to heal.’
The district is split into an elementary school and a combined middle and high school, and there were about the same number of students sick at the two schools.
Updated Covid boosters are expected to roll out in mid-to-late September, but await approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. Danny Benjamin, a pediatrician at Duke University, told NBC News that it’s still early in the year to see a major flu outbreak. He predicted outbreaks would occur in early October.
The US flu season started earlier than expected last year, in the first weeks of October.
According to the CDC, there were 214 positive flu samples — less than one percent of those tested.
The CDC does not track Strep A nationally, so it is impossible to know the daily case numbers.
Invasive Group A Streptococcus (iGAS) occurs when the bacteria invades a person’s deep muscle, fat, and lung tissue.
Symptoms include rash, sore throat, flushed cheeks, muscle aches, fever, and sores on the skin. It is a relatively mild disease that does not cause many child deaths each year
Meanwhile, Covid infections in the US have almost doubled in the past month amid the emergence of two highly mutated variants, official data shows.
The U.S. test positivity rate — the proportion of Pap smears that come back positive — rose from one in 15 in the week ending July 15 to one in eight on Aug. 12, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). facts.