State Setting Up School Reporting System

As schools around the area get going again state health and education officials were scrambling to get a new school coronavirus early warning system up and running. Through the middle of the week, less than 400 out of more than 1,800 schools statewide had been enrolled in the early warning system, according to the state’s Department of Health. Consequently, the state reported just 56 positive coronavirus cases in schools around the state, 25 of which were students. The remaining were faculty and staff. St. Tammany, which began welcoming small groups of students back after Labor Day, said it had 27 faculty or staff either in isolation or in quarantine. The system is designed to give policy makers a better idea of how the virus is spreading in schools. In some other states, the reopening of in-person education has spurred surges in positive cases and in some places, forced temporary shutdowns. The state will initially only provide publicly the total number of school cases statewide, but officials say they will soon do so by region.