NEARLY 5,000 children, educators and school staff are quarantined in Mississippi after returning to classrooms at the start of the new school year, some under mask-optional policies.
The 69 outbreaks reported between Aug. 2 to Aug. 6, which was the second week of school for some districts, resulted in nearly 1,000 children and 300 teachers and staff testing positive for COVID-19, according to a weekly report from Mississippi’s Department of Health.
While many school districts adopted a mask mandate for the beginning of the school year, it was not universal throughout the state, despite pleading from the Mississippi State Medical Association last week for all districts to require students and staff to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status.
The highly contagious delta variant is ripping through Mississippi, which also has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, more than quadrupling case numbers since June and causing a deficit
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