United States: A Massachusetts middle school is going to close for taking care of the cleanliness on Friday, amid surge in COVID-19 cases and will re-open on coming Monday.
The educational institution authorities have mentioned that they have been observing the outbreak at the Peabody middle school in grade six.
As per the letter to families from Superintendent Laurie Hunter, in the current week, around 44 cases has been reported, and there is a significant number of absences because of the current situation.
Along with this, as the number is increasing, the district officials, in consultation with the local public health officials and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, has made the decision to cancel classes and close the school on Friday to allow the students to recover appropriately and to prevent the further increase of the disease. They expected to re-open on Monday.
Moreover, the officials have highlighted that the other schools in the district have a low COVID-19 maximum number.
However, Hunter mentioned in the letter, “All other schools will operate normally and remain optional mask tomorrow. No one can quite explain why these events are occurring in such an isolated way so far. Clearly, exposure at school played a role. We will continue to work with health officials and DESE to determine any other necessary mitigation steps.”
Meanwhile, the school will be cleaned appropriately at the time of closure. All of the sixth-grade students will be provided with the students and the staff the antigen tests so that they can use that before arriving or if they start showing the symptoms related to the infection.
Furthermore, Massachusetts has observed a decrease of the COVID-19 cases since the new variant of the COVID-19 infection Omicron has increased in the month of January, starting towns, cities as well, as the school districts to consider lifting the pandemic safety restriction such as mask mandates.
Public health officials are observing an increase in the cases of COVID-19 infection in entire Europe.
