By Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – Schools in the United States that normally receive students on Mondays are delaying start dates. Teachers and pupils have been tested and schools prepared to return to distance learning. This is because of record COVID-19 numbers from Omicron.

All staff in Washington, D.C. and all 51,000 students from public schools must submit a negative result of a test to the district’s site before they can attend class Wednesday. No acceptance of tests given before Tuesday is possible. The school can give parents rapid tests or they may take their own.

California is also making similar efforts. It pledged to give free home-testing kits to its six million students in K-12 schools.

Michelle Smith McDonald (director of communication and public affairs at the Alameda County Office of Education) stated that there is a lot of COVID. “It’s going be bumpy starting,” she said.

New COVID cases have hit record levels https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/united-states of 400,000 new infections a day on average due to the extremely transmissible nature of the Omicron variant. Experts predict that more people will be tested positive after holiday parties, resulting in millions of people being isolated and quarantined.

Schools across the country, from Massachusetts to Michigan up to Washington State were asking staff and students to delay classes for a few days so they could be tested for COVID.

Gavin Newsom of California, Governor, has declared that shutting down schools is a last resort. School administrators worry about the shortage of teachers and staff.

McDonald’s stated that there will likely be school closings due to the outbreak or insufficient staff.

According to the CDC’s updated guidance, the state has reduced the time that quarantine is allowed for COVID-positive people to be exposed to them to just five days.

Scientists and health experts are concerned https://www.reuters.com/world/us/no-tests-no-problem-experts-question-new-us-cdc-policy-covid-isolation-period-2021-12-29 the policy fails to distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, who recover from the virus at different rates. The policy does not need to be tested before a person can leave quarantine.

California recommended that all individuals have a negative COVID testing before they can be isolated. Other states such as Illinois https://twitter.com/ISBEnews have not adopted the new CDC guidelines.

Asked about the confusion around testing, top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/fauci-warns-danger-hospitalization-surge-due-large-number-covid-cases-2022-01-02 on Sunday that the CDC will soon clarify whether people with COVID-19 should test negative to leave isolation.

The impact of Omicron on schools in the country won’t be known until next week. Administrators and parents are already struggling with changing the guidance and figuring out how many shots students and staff need to receive to ensure that they’re fully vaccinated. COVID has already disrupted the school year three times. This not only affects students academically, but also socially.

Omicron may be milder than coronavirus, but early evidence suggests it is more severe than the other variants. Fauci cautioned that Omicron could cause hospitalizations to soar due to how rapidly it spreads.

According to Reuters, COVID hospitalizations rose 70% nationwide in three weeks. There are more COVID hospitalized patients in Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Washington, D.C., than at any time since the pandemic. In an effort to combat the surge in COVID patients, Ohio has sent National Guard soldiers to Delaware.

New York City Schools, which is the nation’s biggest district, will reopen on Monday with additional testing. All students within the classroom will now be able to take quick at-home tests over the course of the next seven days, instead of being quarantined if one individual tests positive.

Eric Adams, a New York City major told parents not to worry as their children returned to school.

The school is where children are safest. He said that the number of transmissions was low.