Tulsa Public Schools’ Carnegie Elementary School will be closed for a second day Friday due to staff absences.
A decision about Monday’s classes will be made by 5 p.m. Sunday. If the campus remains closed beyond Friday, families will have the opportunity to pick up their students’ Chromebooks and chargers for distance learning, according to a letter from the school’s principal, Krista Blanche.
Drive-through meal service will be available for Carnegie students outside the school building from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday.
Seven of Carnegie’s 23 teachers called in sick Thursday and, via a statement, Blanche said she was unable to secure enough substitute teachers or make other arrangements to safely cover those classes.
A Tulsa Public Schools spokeswoman said Thursday morning that those absences were not due to close-contact COVID-19 exposure quarantines.
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Classes start at Carnegie at 7:35 a.m. and the school’s only bus stop pickup is scheduled for 7:10 a.m. With teachers scheduled to report for work less than 30 minutes before classes start, notifications started going out to parents about the Thursday closure at 7:14 a.m. via email, text message and Facebook.
Carnegie fifth grade parent Lindsey Perry said her family received both the initial closure notice and multiple unofficial notifications via social media as they were preparing to walk out the door around 7:20 a.m. Thursday.
Perry, who stayed home with her daughter Thursday, acknowledged that the notification was not enough time for many other Carnegie families to make alternate arrangements for their children.
However, between COVID-19 case numbers continuing to rise and TPS facing a shortage of substitute teachers, she said she was not entirely caught off guard by the announcement.
“We knew the risk of in-person schooling in the midst of this pandemic and that there would be consequences like this,” she said.
Meanwhile, officials with Glenpool Public Schools announced Thursday morning that the district’s upper and lower elementary schools will not have full in-person classes until Sept. 7 due to increased COVID-19 cases among both staff and students.
In order to provide time for families to make arrangements for their children, Friday will be an optional distance learning day for the two campuses.
“We understand that this is a hardship on families when schools must abruptly move to distance learning,” Glenpool Superintendent Curtis Layton wrote in a letter to parents Thursday announcing the switch. “We need your help preventing the spread of COVID-19 within our schools.”
The Oklahoma State Department of Health’s website notes 103 active cases of COVID-19 in Glenpool.
Glenpool is the second suburban district to announce a shift to distance learning among younger grades due to COVID-19 this week. On Wednesday, a second grade class at Jenks Southeast Elementary School made the switch after six students tested positive. Those students will remain in distance learning through Tuesday.
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Aug. 25, 2021 video. Wearing a mask is a requirement inside the City Hall chamber building.
What do we know about booster shots for COVID-19?
Why might we need boosters?
Answer: It's common for protection from vaccines to decrease over time. A tetanus booster, for example, is recommended every 10 years.
Researchers and health officials have been monitoring the real-world performance of the COVID-19 vaccines to see how long protection lasts among vaccinated people. The vaccines authorized in the U.S. continue to offer very strong protection against severe disease and death.
But laboratory blood tests have suggested that antibodies — one of the immune system's layers of protection — can wane over time. That doesn't mean protection disappears, but it could mean protection is not as strong or that it could take longer for the body to fight back against an infection.
The delta variant has complicated the question of when to give boosters because it is so much more contagious and much of the data gathered about vaccine performance is from before the delta variant was widely circulating. Delta is taking off at the same time that vaccine immunity might also be waning for the first people vaccinated.
Israel is offering a booster to people over 50 who were vaccinated more than five months ago. France and Germany plan to offer boosters to some people in the fall. The European Medicines Agency said it too is reviewing data to see if booster shots are needed.
When would they be given?
Answer: It depends on when you got your initial shots. One possibility is that health officials will recommend people get a booster roughly eight months after getting their second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.
Officials are continuing to collect information about the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was authorized for use in the U.S. in late February, to determine when to recommend boosters.
Who would get them?
Answer: The first people vaccinated in the United States would likely be first in line for boosters too. That means health care workers, nursing home residents and other older Americans, who were the first to be vaccinated once the shots were authorized last December.
What questions remain?
Answer: Still unknown is whether people should get the same type of shot they got when first vaccinated. And the nation's top health advisers will be looking for evidence about the safety of boosters and how well they protect against infection and severe disease.
Global access to vaccines is also important to stem the pandemic and prevent the emergence of new variants. Booster shots could crimp already tight global vaccine supplies.
What about the unvaccinated?
Answer: Dr. Melanie Swift, who has been leading the vaccination program at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says getting more shots into people who haven't yet been vaccinated at all is "our best tool, not only to prevent hospitalization and mortality from the delta variant, but to stop transmission." Every infection, she says, "gives the virus more chances to mutate into who knows what the next variant could be."
"People who took the vaccine the first time are likely to line up and get their booster," Swift says. "But it's not going to achieve our goals overall if all their unvaccinated neighbors are not vaccinated."
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