The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 surpassed a grim new milestone of 250,000 lives lost on Wednesday, as New York City’s public school system, the nation’s largest, called a halt to in-classroom instruction, citing a jump in coronavirus infection rates, Reuters writes.
The decision to shutter schools and revert exclusively to at-home learning, starting on Thursday, came as state and local officials nationwide imposed restrictions on social and economic life to tamp down a surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations heading into winter.
But eight months after New York City emerged as the nation’s first major flashpoint of the epidemic – its hospitals besieged and streets virtually devoid of human activity – the epicenter of the public health crisis has shifted to the upper Midwest.
Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, one of several states in the region dogged by the country’s highest case rates per capita, ordered all restaurants, bars, fitness centers and entertainment venues closed, and all youth sports canceled, for four weeks.
More than 90% of hospitals’ intensive-care unit beds are already occupied in the eastern half of the state, Walz told an evening news briefing, adding: “We are at a dangerous point in this pandemic.”
The action by New York schools, announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio via Twitter, doubtless came as a relief to some teachers, many of whom have expressed fear of being placed at increased risk of exposure to the highly contagious respiratory virus.
But it will bring renewed hardship for working parents forced to make childcare arrangements once more.
“I could lose my job. … I am stuck between bills and my son, and it’s a hard choice. Really hard,” said Felix Franco, 30, a U.S. Postal Service employee who has been on leave recovering from COVID-19 himself since spring and was planning to return to work in two weeks.
Franco, who said he had no one else lined up to care for his 6-year-old son during the school day, is already behind on his monthly car bill and racking up credit card debt.
New York City has seen a late-autumn resurgence of the virus after a summertime lull. Schools have been following a staggered, part-time system of classroom instruction since September, with 1.1 million students dividing their school week between in-person and online learning.
But de Blasio said all instruction would switch back to distance learning again because the positive rate on coronavirus tests in the city rose to a seven-day average of 3%, the threshold for ceasing in-person classes.
“We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19,” he said.
New York joins other large school districts in cities like Boston and Detroit that have recently canceled in-person learning. Within the past week, the Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas and is the fifth largest in the United States, and Philadelphia’s public school system both postponed plans to return to in-person instruction.
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