Orange County Schools Prepare To Resume In-Person Instruction; Officials Aim To Move To Next Tier
SANTA ANA (CBSLA) -- Not all Orange County teachers are ready to go back into the classroom, despite the fact that in-person instruction is allowed to resume Tuesday.
Members of the Newport-Mesa Unified teachers' union shared their concerns at a protest over the weekend.
"Yes, we feel that we're rushing to get everything together," said Tamara Fairbanks, president of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers. "We want to be mindful and make sure everything is safe."
Initially, in Newport-Mesa Unified School District, kindergarten through second grade will return to the classroom, but only for a few hours a day. Other Orange County school districts have opted to stick with distance learning for now.
"We're pushing to get the schools reopened," said O.C. Supervisor Don Wagner.
Orange County reported an additional 138 cases of COVID-19 on Monday, bringing the total number of cases to 52,201.
The county reported no new deaths. The death toll currently remains at 1,128.
Hospitalizations dropped from 194 Sunday to 178 on Monday. The number of patients in ICU also dropped from 65 to 64, the O.C. Health Care Agency reported.
Since the pandemic began, 798,188 COVID-19 tests have been conducted, including 4,485 on Monday. There have been 46,948 documented recoveries.
The county has 65% of its ventilators available and 35% of its ICU beds.
The daily case count per 100,000 people remains at 4.7 and the seven-day rate of residents testing positive sits at 3.9%.
To move to the orange tier of the state's monitoring system, the county must sustain a daily new case rate per 100,000 of 1 to 3.9 and a positivity rate of 2 to 4.9%.
(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)
