LOS ANGELES—Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) will return to campus on Jan. 11 amid a surge in COVID-19 cases—with 62,000 LAUSD students and employees testing positive for the virus as of Jan. 10.
All students and staff are required to upload proof of a negative COVID-19 test to the Daily Pass mobile application before returning to campus, and thousands of at-home test kits were given out by the district over the weekend.
LAUSD’s website reports about 414,000 tests administered as of Jan. 10 with about 62,000 positive tests—a 15 percent positivity rate.
Interim Superintendent Megan Reilly said last week that though the district’s positivity rate is high, it is still below Los Angeles County’s 20.6 percent overall.
“The layered protections we have in school, it works to create a safer environment than what you’re seeing out in the community,” Reilly said.
Students who test positive must stay home for at least five days and test negative for the virus on or after day five, according to the district. If students still test positive after five days, they must stay home for another five days.
While isolating themselves at home for 10 days, students are advised to wear a mask around others—both indoors and outdoors—according to the district’s guidelines.
Students may return to school once their symptoms improve and they test negative for the virus.
Weekly testing will continue for all students and employees regardless of vaccination status through the month of January; beginning in February, only unvaccinated students will be tested weekly.
The district mandated baseline COVID-19 testing ahead of the beginning of the school year last August.
On Jan. 9, the district announced it was suspending and rescheduling all athletic competitions for the week due to the COVID-19 surge.
Besides stricter testing requirements, the LA County Health Department also mandated on Jan. 1 outdoor masks for students and an “upgraded” surgical or N95 mask mandate for staff on campus.
