Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent reported on the start of the virus detection program
A massive program to screen for COVID-19 among Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) employees and students formally began this Monday after a prior trial period, and the tests are expected to be applied to about 770,000 people.
With the detection plan, about 20,000 employees will receive the COVID-19 test this weekreported Austin Beutner, superintendent of LAUSD, America’s second-largest school district.
It seeks to apply the tests to all 700,000 students -the vast majority of whom currently attend virtual classes-, as well as the 70,000 teachers and employees from District.
News release: Los Angeles Unified Begins COVID-19 Testing Program – https://t.co/GbP0E94zte
– LA Unified (@LASchools) September 14, 2020
Beutner hopes that by the end of this week all LAUSD staff will have received an invitation to take the test at one of the 42 established sites in Los Angeles County.
In a “few more weeks” the invitation will have been extended to all LAUSD students, beginning with elementary school students, the superintendent explained.
“We will test more asymptomatic people, who may not feel symptoms even if they carry the virus. We will also test many more children, ”Beutner announced in a virtual conference on Sunday, presenting the start of the plan this week.
The COVID-19 Testing Initiative is autonomous from LAUSD and is not dependent on Los Angeles County public health organizations for its development.
“Ideally the health system should be doing this, but has not responded quickly enough to needs”Said the head of the Los Angeles school district.
Taking into account that it is a “proactive and not reactive” action, the contagion indicators are expected to be lower than in the tests applied by the health system to people at high risk or with symptoms of coronavirus. Indeed, of 5,000 tests applied the previous week as a previous practice of the program, only five individuals tested positive.
Beutner hopes that once the detection system is fully operational, it will have the capacity to apply a minimum of 20,000 tests daily.
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