COVID-19 Update: Many school districts plan to open for the fall in remote-only mode

It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties here and across the coun­try are work­ing to mitigate.

With sum­mer more than halfway over, local health depart­ments and school dis­tricts are decid­ing if and how they will allow stu­dents back in the classroom.

Wash­ing­ton

On Wednes­day, July 29th, the Boe­ing Com­pa­ny declared a $2.4 bil­lion quar­ter­ly loss, made sig­nif­i­cant cuts in com­mer­cial air­craft pro­duc­tion and warned about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of expand­ing com­pa­ny-wide lay­offs beyond a planned 10% of the work­force (and beyond a planned 15% of its Com­mer­cial Air­craft unit) as the pan­dem­ic rav­ages demand for air trav­el. For the first time in a decade, Boe­ing’s Defense unit will like­ly out­per­form its Com­mer­cial Air­craft unit in 2020.

On Mon­day, August 3rd, Alas­ka Air­lines filed notice with the State of Wash­ing­ton, announc­ing lay­offs for almost 1,600 employ­ees, effec­tive Octo­ber 1st.

In late July, Alas­ka stat­ed that it was los­ing around $4 mil­lion per day due to the sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in com­mer­cial air trav­el as a result of the pandemic.

On Wednes­day, August 5th, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, in a press con­fer­ence accom­pa­nied by Chris Reyk­dal, the Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion, announced new rec­om­men­da­tions for the 2020–2021 school year (which runs Sep­tem­ber-June) from the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health.

As with the Safe Start phased reopen­ing plan, local school dis­tricts, advised by coun­ty depart­ments of health, will decide if and how they will allow stu­dents back in the class­room. That said, as most coun­ties are present­ly con­sid­ered Mod­er­ate or High Risk per the rec­om­men­da­tions, remote or online learn­ing is strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed for most Wash­ing­ton stu­dents at this time.

On Thurs­day, August 6th, Inslee announced new guid­ance for long-term care facil­i­ties, allow­ing for a grad­u­at­ed reopen­ing of facil­i­ties that meet spe­cif­ic require­ments. The fol­low­ing graph­ic explains what is allowed.

On Sat­ur­day, August 7th, eleven con­firmed cas­es of chil­dren suf­fer­ing from Mul­ti­sys­tem Inflam­ma­to­ry Syn­drome (MIS‑C) were con­firmed in Wash­ing­ton state. MIS‑C is asso­ci­at­ed with the nov­el coro­n­avirus, SARS-CoV­‑2.

Six of the chil­dren affect­ed are nine years of age or younger. “While MIS‑C is very rare, par­ents should be aware it can hap­pen and con­tact their health care provider if their chil­dren devel­op new or unusu­al symp­toms,” said Dr. Kathy Lofy, state health offi­cer for the Wash­ing­ton state Depart­ment of Health.

On Sun­day, August 9th, Chris­t­ian Con­tem­po­rary musi­cian Sean Feucht held a ral­ly in Cal Ander­son Park in Seat­tle. Although there were sound bytes about “racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion,” Feucht has been using these ral­lies to delib­er­ate­ly flout mask laws in mul­ti­ple states, repeat­ing the process in Port­land on August 8th.

On Mon­day, August 10th, Gov­er­nor Inslee pro­vid­ed spe­cif­ic guid­ance for agri­cul­tur­al events and updat­ed guid­ance for indoor fit­ness facil­i­ties and faith-based ser­vices. That same day, he also announced the avail­abil­i­ty of new relief funds for immi­grants and agri­cul­tur­al workers.

On Tues­day, August 11th, a fire­fight­er who helped put out the Anglin Fire near Tonas­ket, which was con­tained August 1st, was diag­nosed with COVID-19. It’s the third state Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources fire­fight­er diag­no­sis this fire season.

Franklin Coun­ty, one of the hotspots with­in the state for the pan­dem­ic, will open its pub­lic schools on Fri­day, August 14th, with remote access an option.

Eduar­do Cas­tañe­da-Díaz, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger for one of the 13th Leg­isla­tive Dis­tric­t’s House seats, has focused his mes­sage on farm­work­er safe­ty in the midst of the pan­dem­ic and has called for the boy­cott of local­ly grown fruit.

Oregon

On Fri­day, August 7th, the Ore­gon Health Author­i­ty dis­closed that an inves­ti­ga­tion of Smith Frozen Foods in West­on had been trig­gered on Fri­day, July 24th. The facil­i­ty has three hun­dred and twen­ty-five employ­ees who work around the clock.

On Mon­day, August 10th, the State of Ore­gon dis­closed that on July 29th, Alas­ka Air­lines filed notice that it would lay off two hun­dred and sev­en­ty-sev­en employ­ees at its Port­land facility.

At about the same time, Nike began let­ting go of around five hun­dred employ­ees at its Beaver­ton head­quar­ters, and of three hun­dred and fifty-five food ser­vice employ­ees at Ara­mark being laid off which work on the Nike campus.

On Tues­day, August 11th, the Pac-12 Con­fer­ence joined the Big Ten in can­cel­ing their autumn sports (includ­ing the grid­iron sea­son) over con­cerns regard­ing the pan­dem­ic and the poten­tial for infect­ing play­ers and oth­er stu­dents with­in their uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ties. Need­less to say, cer­tain peo­ple aren’t tak­ing this well.

Of the remain­ing mem­bers of the “Pow­er Five” col­le­giate foot­ball con­fer­ences, the Big 12, Atlantic Coast Con­fer­ence (ACC) and South­east­ern Con­fer­ence (the SEC) have all, with enough wig­gle room in their offi­cial com­ments to opt out if deemed nec­es­sary, declared their intent to play.

On Wednes­day, August 12th, the Ore­gon Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion bowed to pres­sure from rur­al com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and released new stan­dards for in-per­son instruc­tion in the state’s most sparse­ly-pop­u­lat­ed areas.

That same day, Ore­gon health offi­cials encour­aged par­ents to ensure their chil­dren’s vac­cines are up to date after months of can­celed doc­tors’ appoint­ments due to the pan­dem­ic. Last August, one of the largest out­breaks of measles in the state in the last twen­ty years occurred due to delib­er­ate refusals by par­ents to inoc­u­late chil­dren against the dis­ease. With many chil­dren and teenagers behind on their vac­cine sched­ule, the Ore­gon Health Author­i­ty is wor­ried about out­breaks of vac­cine-pre­ventable dis­eases amid the pandemic.

Idaho

There were four hun­dred and fifty-sev­en new cas­es of COVID-19 on Wednes­day, July 29th, five hun­dred and fifty-nine new cas­es on Tues­day, August 4th, four hun­dred and twen­ty-nine new cas­es on Mon­day, August 10th, four hun­dred and nine­ty-five new cas­es on Tues­day, August 11th and five hun­dred and thir­ty-eight new cas­es on Wednes­day, August 12th.

On Tues­day, August 11th, East­ern Ida­ho Pub­lic Health’s board of direc­tors, in a unan­i­mous vote, made wear­ing masks in pub­lic in Teton, Fre­mont and Jef­fer­son coun­ties manda­to­ry. That same day, by a four to two vote, the Cen­tral Dis­trict Health Board of Health made wear­ing masks in Val­ley Coun­ty manda­to­ry, and in a five to one vote, lim­it­ed social gath­er­ings to ten peo­ple or less in Ada Coun­ty, which includes Ida­ho’s largest city and state cap­i­tal of Boise.

A group of Repub­li­cans in the state leg­is­la­ture, known as the Edu­ca­tion Work­ing Group, are push­ing for a pro­pos­al where­by school boards, the gov­er­nor and the State Board of Edu­ca­tion would have the author­i­ty to close schools to pre­vent the spread of dis­ease, but pub­lic health dis­tricts would not.

Whether this pro­pos­al will be con­sid­ered any­time soon depends on what Gov­er­nor Brad Lit­tle declares the top­ics to be addressed before he con­venes an extra­or­di­nary ses­sion of the Leg­is­la­ture over the week of August 24th.

The Ida­ho States­man is pro­vid­ing an inter­ac­tive map to track food pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties falling prey to out­breaks of COVID-19.

British Colum­bia

On Wednes­day, August 12th, provin­cial health offi­cer Dr. Bon­nie Hen­ry announced eighty-five new con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19; the third high­est num­ber of cas­es record­ed in a sin­gle day since the start of the pandemic.

That same day, Pre­mier John Hor­gan declared that the province would be hir­ing 500 health-care pro­fes­sion­als to help with its COVID-19 con­tact trac­ing efforts to pre­pare for a poten­tial fur­ther surge in COVID-19 cas­es as flu sea­son approach­es. Hor­gan also called on B.C. celebri­ties, such as Ryan Reynolds and Seth Rogen, to to help with mes­sag­ing regard­ing the pan­dem­ic for younger people.

That same day, provin­cial edu­ca­tion min­is­ter Rob Flem­ing declared that schools would open on Sep­tem­ber 10th, two days lat­er than orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed per the province-wide plan to return chil­dren to classrooms.

The hard, cold numbers

Wash­ing­ton state has had 66,497 cas­es and 1,726 attrib­ut­able deaths.

1,010,191 peo­ple have been tested.

Ore­gon has had 22,022 cas­es and 375 attrib­ut­able deaths.

461,395 peo­ple have been tested.

Ida­ho has had 26,133 cas­es and 246 attrib­ut­able deaths.

212,898 peo­ple have been tested.

British Colum­bia has had 4,196 cas­es and 196 attrib­ut­able deaths.

293,127 peo­ple have been tested.