Atlanta to require students, teachers to mask up as school starts
The upcoming school year will be a masked one for students and staff in Georgia’s capital city.
Atlanta Public Schools said Thursday that masks will be required for all students and employees for the school year beginning Aug. 5, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
“Given our low vaccination rates and increasing community spread, the CDC acknowledges that universal masking would be appropriate,” the district said in a notice announcing the policy.
The “Universal Mask Wearing” policy will be implemented in part because just an estimated 18% of eligible APS students have been fully vaccinated and those under 12 are not yet eligible, said this district, citing the Fulton County Board of Health.
Pointing to a district survey, the notice said that, to date, about 58% of district employees have said they are fully vaccinated or plan to be.
The notice also pointed to the dominance of the delta variant, which the district wrote “may spread 225% faster than the original virus.”
The variant “is spreading 50% faster than Alpha [first identified in the U.K.], which was 50% more contagious than the original strain,” Yale Medicine epidemiologist Dr. F. Perry Wilson said in a recent piece published by the medical group.
APS said it will keep offering weekly COVID-19 surveillance testing and, along with Walgreens, will offer vaccines to families and staff during a July 31 Back to School Bash.
The district will offer shots to eligible middle and high school students, as well as staff, beginning Aug. 9.
