Campuses in the Los Angeles school district have improved attendance and lower coronavirus rates in their second week since returning from winter break. But infections remain near record levels and the data are difficult to interpret because health officials have suspended contact-tracing requirements.School officials said they are encouraged by the numbers, which come amid growing signs that the unprecedented surge of the Omicron variant could be peaking. For the school week ending Jan. 16, L.A. school officials recorded an infection rate among students tested of 11%. This compares with a rate of 17% during baseline testing conducted from Jan. 3 through Jan. 10, prior to the start of school after winter break. The first day of classes was Jan. 11. The last week of school before winter break — when the Omicron variant surge already was pushing up numbers — the student infection rate was 0.22%.Put another way, in testing during the week that ended Dec. 17, about 2 students in 1,000 tested positive. In early January baseline testing just before school restarted, about 170 students per 1,000 tested positive. And, during the first week of school, about 110 students per 1,000 tested positive.School officials interpreted the data as evidence that schools are safe and that students should be in school. “Our schools are the safest-possible environments for our students and employees,” district officials posted on social media Wednesday. “We know that children thrive best when learning in person amongst their peers. While COVID-19 may be here to stay, Los Angeles Unified will continue to be nimble, resilient and responsive to the changing conditions of the pandemic.”Attendance rates this week have improved significantly from last week, although they are still well below normal. About 33% of students were not in class the first week. On Tuesday that figure was 28%. On Wednesday, it was 24%. Many students who tested positive in the week before school could be back in class — as could some students who were being held at home last week by worried parents.Three current outbreak investigations are focused on L.A. Unified schools — at 102nd Street Early Education Center in Watts, Whitney Young Continuation High School in Hyde Park and 52nd Street Elementary in Vermont Square. An outbreak is when there are three or more cases of infection within a 14-day period linked to each other by contact in school. This magnitude of outbreaks is about the same as in the fall, possibly suggesting that schools are effectively containing the spread of the virus on campus. It’s hard to be certain, however, because the high number of cases has made contact tracing difficult — and both state and county health officials have told schools they can abandon the effort during the current surge. That means a school-based outbreak might not be identified at all. Under a currently active “surge protocol,” schools are no longer required to notify the county “of
persons on campus who were exposed to the infected person during the infectious period.” This information had previously been used to identify outbreaks on campus.By any standard, the Omicron surge has rewritten the record books for infections found among students. For a week in mid-November, for example, when health officials still were dealing with the Delta variant surge, the number of students with positive tests in L.A. Unified was 612. During the first week of school in January, the figure was 39,215. And these were, by and large, students who had just been cleared to attend school in baseline testing the week before. This baseline testing found more than 60,000 additional infected students — who had to stay home until cleared for return. The staff infection rate for the week ending Jan. 16 was 12.8%, signaling the ongoing struggle — both in L.A. Unified and across the nation to maintain classroom learning. The number of staff cases last week — including among people who’d been cleared for work the previous week — was 4,282. This compares to 36 during a week in mid-November, when schools already were hard-pressed to fill vacancies and dealing with a shortage of substitute teachers. Determining those who were close contacts to an infected person during the Omicron surge has become increasingly difficult, but L.A. Unified has tried. Last week, the figures were 855 close contacts among staff and 24,073 among students. Under prior district policy, all of these contacts would have had to remain home for as much as two weeks. Under revised policy, the vast majority have been able to remain on campus, although the district did not release a specific breakdown.Revised district policies allow exposed individuals to remain on campus provided they continue to test negative, have no symptoms and were following safety protocols at the time of the exposure.During the first week of school, about half of the 130,000 student absences were accounted for by those who tested positive for the coronavirus in the week before the start of the term. Others may have tested positive or had symptoms, but the information was not uploaded to the district’s health-screening system. There was no estimate regarding how many families chose to keep students home out of caution.L.A. Unified operates the largest school coronavirus testing program in the nation, with more than 500,000 mandatory tests administered every week for all students and staff. Countywide data on testing are driven largely by the L.A. Unified results, even though L.A. Unified accounts for about a third of county students. For example, from Jan. 3 through Jan. 9, L.A. Unified was responsible for 432,646 of the 547,466 tests — about 80% of the school-related tests. And that was before L.A. Unified reopened and resumed its standard weekly testing.