Aug. 18 2021 Just a week after the start of school, the coronavirus spread rapidly in a school district in Florida, according to the latest data on the 17th, the state’s Hillsborough County School District, more than 8,700 teachers and students infected with the coronavirus or contact with the coronavirus patients, was told to quarantine (isolate) or quarantine (quarantine).
Hillsborough County School District officials said the number of students and faculty quarantined by the district for infection with or exposure to coronavirus patients soared to 8,707 on Wednesday. 1,600 students and faculty tested positive.
The school district board said in a statement Thursday that it will hold an emergency meeting on the afternoon of the 18th to discuss the coronavirus outbreak and response strategies, including whether to “force all students and employees to wear masks.”
The Hillsborough School District, Florida’s third-largest university district and the nation’s eighth-largest, has 208,000 students who officially returned to school on August 10.
School district officials announced in early August that they would require students to wear masks in the new school year. However, under a ban on mandatory masks issued by Florida Gov. DeSantis, parents can choose not to comply for any reason.
As of August 12, the county’s public schools had received 27,915 applications not to wear masks, hillsborough school district spokeswoman Alja said.
According to data compiled by The Washington Post, Florida continues to record daily new cases and hospitalizations, averaging more than 217,000 new cases per day and more than 168,000 new hospitalizations, nearly a fifth of the nation’s total hospitalizations.
