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Teachers from at least three states have died from the coronavirus since the start of the new school year, and the leader of a teacher workers union expressed concern that a return to face-to-face classes will have a lethal impact across the United States unless proper precautions are taken.
AshLee DeMarinis was just 34 when she died Sunday after spending three weeks in the hospital. She taught social skills and special education at John Evans High School in Potosi, Missouri, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) southwest of St. Louis.
A third grade teacher died Monday in South Carolina, and two other teachers died recently in Mississippi. The number of teachers who have become ill with COVID-19 in the United States since the school year began is unknown, but in Mississippi alone, 604 infections have been reported among teachers and school personnel.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, noted that schools need guidelines such as mandatory mask use and strict social distancing rules for safe reopening.
“If community contagion is as high as in Missouri and Mississippi, if you don’t have the infrastructure to do diagnostic tests, and if you don’t have security measures to prevent the spread of viruses in schools, we believe that you won’t we can reopen face-to-face classes, ”Weingarten declared.
Johnny Dunlap, a theater and forensic studies teacher at Dodge City High School in Kansas, said he considered resigning before the district mandated the mandatory wearing of masks between teachers and students. However, his history of bladder cancer and high blood pressure has left the 39-year-old professor somewhat distraught from being surrounded by so many people. Previous health problems can raise the risk of death and complications among COVID-19 patients.
“I am in a high school with about 2,000 students, so it is something that goes more or less against the recommendations that we have given for the last half year,” Dunlap said.
The first stage of the pandemic claimed the lives of dozens of teachers. In the New York City Department of Education alone, 75 employees died of the coronavirus, of which 31 were teachers.
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