Parents should keep children at home if they can, the district said.
Skyrocketing COVID-19 positivity rates in schools in Austin, Texas, have local health officials on edge.
In Travis County, where Austin is located, the COVID-19 test positivity rate is 20.2% in high schools, 27.1% in high schools, 19.8% in elementary schools, and 10% in kindergartens.
All rates are much higher than what the World Health Organization recommends, which is to get the thresholds for positivity testing below 5% for 14 days.
Part of the problem may be that nearby schools are nearly full. “Some of our superintendents report that some individual schools have between 70% and 90% of the occupancy rate,” says Dr. Mark Escott, interim medical director and health authority for Austin Public Health.
“This is a recipe for disaster. It is a recipe for outbreaks in our schools,” said Escott.
Escott and the Austin Independent School District are urging parents to keep their children at home if they are able to, according to KVUE, affiliated with ABC News Austin.
“And in addition to the impact on our children’s health, on our teachers and school staff, that’s also on the continuity of education,” said Escott. “We will soon see that we will no longer have teachers to provide personal education.”
At the same time, Austin is struggling with increasing hospital admissions and shrinking ICU space.
This week, the state opened the Austin Convention Center as a field hospital for less severe COVID-19 patients who require less care.
The site, which will have 25 beds, can be expanded with more beds as needed and aims to “reduce the burden on local hospitals and ensure that Texans diagnosed with COVID-19 get the care they need. “said Gov. Greg Abbott. said in a statement.
Texas surpassed 2 million COVID-19 infections this week, making it the only state outside of California to reach that milestone, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. There have been 31,277 deaths from the virus in the state since the outbreak began.
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