Nearly 260 Georgia school employees have tested positive for Covid-19 in the Gwinnett County Public School (GCPS) District.
“As of last Thursday, we had approximately 260 employees who had been excluded from work due to a positive case or contact with a case,” GCPS spokeswoman Sloan Roach told CNN in an email. “This number is fluid as we continue to have new reports and others who are returning to work.”
GCPS is Georgia’s largest school district and is set to begin its school year virtually on Aug. 12. The positive cases come as some parents in the state are protesting and demanding students be allowed to go back to school for in-person instruction.
“The virus is not going away, we know it’s not going away. We have to enforce some sort of normal,” Gwinnett parent, Joanne Bayouk, told CNN. “And though our normal is going to change, our kids need to go back.”
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Initially the district planned to allow an in-person instruction option, but changed its course “due to the current Covid-19 situation in our county and the rising numbers of cases in Gwinnett County,” according to Roach.
Gwinnet County boasts the second highest number of covid-19 cases in state behind Fulton County. Gwinnett had 18,550 cases and 241 deaths as of publication time according to the Georgia Department of Health.
GCPS has a “reporting and tracing” protocol in place that calls for any employees who test positive to stay home, the report states.
“We have people who have called in to report who have not been at school or work,” Roach said. “Given the number of COVID cases in Gwinnett we would expect to see positives among our employees based on the community spread in our county.”
