A total of 812 new cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Massachusetts schools during a two-week period that includes April break, education officials said Thursday.
From April 15 to April 28, public schools reported 718 students and 94 staff members were positive for the coronavirus, according to data from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Those figures include students and staffers who tested positive within seven days of being in a school building.
Those positives included 711 students and 85 staffers at local school districts, 3 students and 5 staffers at education collaboratives, and 4 students and 4 staffers at approved special education schools.
The percent of individuals in schools reported with COVID is 0.11% among students and 0.08% among staffers, data indicates.
The last COVID case report from DESE detailed cases among 1,095 students and 184 staff members detected from April 8 to 14, the highest total number since the state began releasing the data. The week prior, the state reported a total of 978 new cases.
The numbers in this week’s report may be lower than before because cases are only reported by the state if the child or staffer was in a school within the seven days before testing positive. School vacation meant students were not in school buildings.
From April 12 to 25, the state-funded pooled COVID testing program had a positivity rate of 0.91%, according to the department. There are 184 districts participating in the last two weeks, with an average of 7.2 swabs per pool and 10,857 pools processed. Of those pools, there have been 99 positive results.
Through the entire pooled testing program, from Feb. 1 to April 25, 188 districts have participated in the program, with 61,839 pools processed, 524 positive results, and a positivity rate of 0.85%, data indicates.
“With hundreds of thousands of students returning to school buildings, medical experts have forecasted that the number of positive cases reported to schools may increase due to the increased volume of students. The Department will continue to follow safety guidelines and mitigation strategies, including pooled testing to help identify and isolate positive cases,” reads a note from DESE with the case data.
Among school districts, New Bedford reported the most student cases with 43, according to the data. West Springfield had 26, Framingham had 24 and Taunton had 20.
Staff cases were highest in districts in Worcester, with 13, followed by Fall River with 4, according to DESE.
Among education collaboratives, there was one student case each at the Collaborative for Regional Educational Service and Training (CREST), Valley Collaborative and Northshore Education Consortium. There were two staff cases at LABBB Collaborative and one student case each at Collaborative for Regional Educational Service and Training (CREST), Cape Cod Collaborative and South Shore Educational Collaborative (SSEC).
At approved special education schools, there was one student case each at New England Academy School, Landmark School, Perkins School for Blind and Center for Applied Behavioral Instruction School. Three staff cases were reported at May Center School for Autism and Developmental Disabilities (Randolph) and one staff case was reported at Nashoba Learning Group.
There are roughly 650,000 students and 125,000 staffers in public school buildings. On Wednesday, DESE started requiring districts to provide five days a week of in-person learning for students in grades 6-8 unless the district obtained a waiver. Earlier this month, the same requirement started for K-5 students.
This week, the state also announced that districts on May 17 would need to provide full-time education for high schoolers.
Officials have said in-person spread of the virus in school buildings has been minimal.
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