{"id":34229,"date":"2021-08-19T05:00:24","date_gmt":"2021-08-19T10:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=34229"},"modified":"2021-08-19T16:48:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T21:48:00","slug":"as-a-new-school-year-starts-stateimpact-is-again-tracking-covid-19s-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2021\/08\/19\/as-a-new-school-year-starts-stateimpact-is-again-tracking-covid-19s-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"As a new school year starts, StateImpact is tracking COVID-19\u2019s impact"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 100%; height: 170px; margin-bottom: 20px; border-radius: 10px; overflow:hidden;\"><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 170px;\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https:\/\/player.captivate.fm\/episode\/48a1f897-f5d3-4005-9637-dfd298f963b1\"><\/iframe><\/div><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last fall, COVID-19 was present in schoolhouses <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2020\/09\/10\/a-month-into-the-fall-semester-stateimpact-oklahoma-has-tracked-hundreds-of-covid-19-cases-in-schools\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in every corner of the state<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This fall appears to be no different. Only days into the new school year, districts are reporting cases and pivoting to distance learning as the pandemic rages.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">StateImpact is again tracking COVID-19\u2019s spread. But this time, the database will measure school closures rather than cases. You can see the sortable, searchable database below:<\/span><\/p><p><iframe id=\"datawrapper-chart-WFqmJ\" style=\"width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;\" title=\"Oklahoma school closures and pivots to distance learning\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/WFqmJ\/2\/\" height=\"1469\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" aria-label=\"table\"><\/iframe><script type=\"text\/javascript\">!function(){\"use strict\";window.addEventListener(\"message\",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data[\"datawrapper-height\"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll(\"iframe\");for(var a in e.data[\"datawrapper-height\"])for(var r=0;r<t.length;r++){if(t[r].contentWindow===e.source)t[r].style.height=e.data[\"datawrapper-height\"][a]+\"px\"}}}))}();\n<\/script><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The virus\u2019 impact still isn\u2019t fully understood. But as school starts up, the highly contagious Delta variant is raging across Oklahoma, again <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2021\/08\/12\/internal-documents-reveal-health-officials-bleak-outlook-on-oklahomas-covid-hospitalizations\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">leaving hospitals burdened<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Statewide, coronavirus hospitalizations are nearing the records set during the post-Christmas surge. As of this week, about 1,200 Oklahomans are in the hospital every day. In some areas, like the Tulsa metro, daily hospitalizations have surpassed that record.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the pandemic\u2019s early waves, hospitalizations were rare among young people and children. That appears to be shifting with the Delta variant. The State Department of Health began tracking pediatric hospitalizations, and for the past few weeks, it has reported more than 40 per day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oklahoma medical experts began raising concerns about COVID-19 in children earlier this summer. Dr. Donna Tyungu, a pediatric infectious disease specialist with OU Health, said during a Healthier Oklahoma Coalition briefing in July that their system is seeing healthy young people coming in needing oxygen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The politics of the situation also leave more question marks this school year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In July, controversial <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kosu.org\/education\/2021-05-26\/oklahoma-bill-would-ban-some-vaccine-masking-requirements-in-schools\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Senate Bill 658<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> went into effect. The new law prohibits public school districts from implementing a mask mandate without a governor-declared state of emergency.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A handful of public schools - most prominently <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kosu.org\/education\/2021-08-13\/masks-will-be-required-at-oklahoma-city-public-schools-starting-monday\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oklahoma City Public Schools<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> - have defied the law through a loophole, using superintendents to implement mask mandates with opt-out policies instead of school board votes, which are what\u2019s specifically laid out in the law.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But in the vast majority of classrooms, the state law holds and masks are optional, limiting the best layer of mitigation against the coronavirus for unvaccinated individuals like all children under the age of 12.<\/span><\/p><p><iframe id=\"datawrapper-chart-neEUM\" style=\"width: 0; min-width: 100% !important; border: none;\" title=\"Where schools have closed or pivoted to distance learning because of COVID-19\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/neEUM\/5\/\" height=\"438\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" aria-label=\"Map\"><\/iframe><script type=\"text\/javascript\">!function(){\"use strict\";window.addEventListener(\"message\",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data[\"datawrapper-height\"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll(\"iframe\");for(var a in e.data[\"datawrapper-height\"])for(var r=0;r<t.length;r++){if(t[r].contentWindow===e.source)t[r].style.height=e.data[\"datawrapper-height\"][a]+\"px\"}}}))}();\n<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last fall, COVID-19 was present in schoolhouses in every corner of the state.\u00a0This fall appears to be no different. Only days into the new school year, districts are reporting cases and pivoting to distance learning as the pandemic rages.StateImpact is again tracking COVID-19\u2019s spread. But this time, the database will measure school closures rather than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":34230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34229"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34241,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34229\/revisions\/34241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}