OC schools reopen for fall without alternate plans if Covid outbreaks hit

OC schools reopen for fall without alternate plans if Covid outbreaks hit

“The honest answer is we don’t know how it’s going to play out because we’re dealing with a highly transmissible variant,” said UC Irvine biostatistician [and statistics professor] Vladimir Minin on Voice of OC’s Monday virtual COVID town hall. Minin noted that most of the tactics and data schools are now relying on were developed before the highly contagious Delta variant hit. His colleague, UCI epidemiologist [and nursing assistant professor] Sanghyuk Shin, echoed Minin’s concerns. “What we’re seeing is in the places where schools have opened up in the presence of Delta, they had to close down very quickly. We’ve seen that in Mississippi,” Shin said during the town hall. “Within just a week of school opening up, 5 outbreaks at 5 different schools — they had to close down and go back to remote learning.”