Elementary schools in LA County could reopen in a few weeks, says Barbara Ferrer

LOS ANGELES (KABC) – Elementary schools in Los Angeles County could be just a few weeks away from reopening if coronavirus rates continue to fall, the county’s highest public health official said on Wednesday.

The director of public health, Dr. Barbara Ferrer, said that if the decline continues, the county may be able to reopen elementary schools for limited in-person training in a few weeks.

She said that for the reopening of schools for students from transition kindergarten through sixth grade, the county must have a new average daily rate of 25 to 100,000 residents – a threshold set by the state. The current county rate is 48 per 100,000.

“I think it will take us two to three weeks to reduce this rate, and that means everyone continues to do their best, follow the rules to make sure the transmission goes down and doesn’t come back,” Ferrer said.

“And the state, along with this case rate, there are a lot of requirements that schools need to be able to meet if they are to reopen while we are in the purple sector,” she added.

RELATED: LAUSD pushes back the CDC school reopening report

Ferrer added that the next three to four weeks will be crucial for the reopening of schools and that the county must do “everything necessary” to achieve it.

Eyewitnesses contacted the union representing teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, United Teachers Los Angeles, but did not respond.

Ferrer’s comment comes as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that with the right mitigation measures, there is a path to low-risk, in-person learning.

LAUSD officials are pushing back the guidelines. Some local teachers and LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner do not feel comfortable going back to the personal learning of that CDC report.

Beutner said that in addition to safety measures, teachers and staff must be vaccinated before returning to class.

Vaccination efforts are still affecting road bumps, but California is improving its launch. After being nearly killed last week in the country last week, as a percentage of the population that was shot, California is now in 38th place, with about 7% of the population receiving at least one dose.

That means more than 2.7 million doses so far, most in the country. Almost 58% of the doses sent to our state were distributed.

While hospitalizations in LA County are still high, they are declining. Ferrer warned that deaths from COVID-19 are still on the rise, and the county still has a long way to go.

City News Service contributed to this report.