Los Angeles County public health officials have announced new guidelines for school districts that choose to resume in-person learning in the fall amid the coronavirus pandemic, warning that things will look very different on campus when school returns. students and teachers.
Authorities said Monday that children in Los Angeles County’s 80 school districts would be required to cover their faces, with exceptions such as during naps, and the use of hand sanitizers will be encouraged, especially among more students. young boys. Social distancing practices will be maintained and team sports that do not allow physical distancing will not be allowed.
“I want to assure you that we are committed to working closely with school districts,” said Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.
Currently there is no clear threshold for when a school can be considered unsafe, but like businesses, schools would have to report a group of three or more cases to the health department. As of now, there is no plan to regularly evaluate students.
“It is not a one-size-fits-all approach,” said Ferrer.
The news comes immediately after a decision by the Los Angeles Unified School District to keep its campuses closed in the fall. Schools will continue online learning until further notice, Supt. Austin Beutner announced Monday.
The state is seeing a massive increase in coronavirus cases, worrying health officials about new reopens and forcing some facilities to close. On Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom ordered the suspension of indoor operations at gyms, hair salons, hair salons, nail salons, and other personal care facilities, as well as shopping malls and places of worship in more than 30 counties on the watch list. of the state. The order, which also prohibits indoor protests and the closure of noncritical workplaces, affects all Southern California counties, including Los Angeles, and comes weeks after officials authorized several reopens across the state. .
Newsom also ordered the statewide closure of all indoor operations in restaurants, bars, wineries, zoos, and museums. The decision previously had affected only Los Angeles County and other areas that had seen an increase in the rate of positive infection test results and an increase in hospitalizations.
“This virus will not go away anytime soon,” Newsom said during a press conference on Monday.
Los Angeles County remains a hot spot for COVID-19. More than 133,600 people have been infected and 3,822 have died. Authorities on Monday announced an additional 13 coronavirus-related deaths and more than 2,590 infections. The county accounts for most of the state’s 326,187 infections and 7,053 deaths.
“While our death rate has remained relatively stable,” said Ferrer, “we anticipate that, unfortunately, with the increase in hospitalizations, we will soon see a corresponding increase in the number of people who die.”
The county continues to see outbreaks at various businesses. Los Angeles Apparel, a southern Los Angeles clothing manufacturer that shifted operations to produce and distribute face masks, closed after 300 employees were infected with COVID-19 and four employees died from the virus.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health first closed operations on June 27 after inspectors found “gross violations” of public health infection control orders and said the company did not cooperate with an investigation. of a reported coronavirus outbreak. On Thursday, the department ordered the continued suspension of the operation.
At a fire station serving Los Angeles International Airport, 20 firefighters have tested positive for the virus. A firefighter is hospitalized, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Peter Sanders said Monday.
Fire Station 80 handles calls related to aircraft and equipment at LAX airfield, but does not respond to calls for fires or medical assistance at airport terminals. A total of 48 firefighters work at the station, Sanders said.
A firefighter tested positive about two weeks ago. Other firefighters at the station were later tested in their own time at a private facility over the July 4 vacation weekend, Sanders said.
Firefighters at other stations with aircraft-related training are taking turns from outsiders, Sanders said.
Los Angeles World Airports spokeswoman Becca Doten said staff levels had not fallen below those required by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Doten said the airports division had notified the FAA of the outbreak “out of courtesy and to learn about the situation.”
In Los Angeles County, 2,056 people are hospitalized for the virus, 28% of whom are in intensive care. The current number is still significantly higher than the 1,350 to 1,450 daily hospitalizations seen just four weeks ago.
That number continues to rise across the state, a reality that is draining the hospital’s capacity.
In San Francisco, the weekly rate of hospitalizations for COVID-19 has nearly doubled. The city remains “in a very vulnerable situation,” the city’s Director of Public Health, Dr. Grant Colfax, said Monday during an online forum. The city has nearly 4,600 cases of the virus, of which about 1,000 were diagnosed in the past two weeks, and 50 residents have died from the virus.
Almost half of all who tested positive in the city are Latino, he said. The positivity rate is now 7.8 per 100,000 residents, he said.
“This indicates that the virus is spreading throughout the city, particularly in the southeastern part of the city,” said Colfax.
He said that for every person who contracts the virus, another 1.25 are infected.
“We really need to reduce that to one or less as fast and as soon as possible.”
This transmission rate in San Francisco was previously as low as .85. If left unchanged, Colfax said, the number of deaths in San Francisco could rise from 50 to 890 by the end of the year, depending on the model. He urged people not to socialize with other homes, especially indoors, and the time spent outdoors is believed to be 10-20 times safer than indoors.
Experts estimate that the vaccines will not be widely available for 12 to 18 months. Colfax said vaccine trials in the city can start as soon as next month.
That transmission rate has increased in other places, including Los Angeles County, where authorities had previously projected that 1 in 140 residents are unknowingly infected with the virus.
“The virus continues in our community,” said Ferrer.
Times staff writers Dakota Smith and Maura Dolan contributed to this report.
