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Second Clayton County school switches to virtual learning due to COVID-19

By FOX 5 Atlanta Digital Team
Updated  August 15, 2021 1:30pm EDT
Clayton County
FOX 5 Atlanta

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CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. - Another metro Atlanta school is moving to remote learning amid the recent spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Georgia.

Clayton County Schools announced on Sunday Kendrick Middle School in Jonesboro will pivot to online learning effective Monday. Faculty and students will return to the classroom on Aug. 30.

Breakfast and lunch meals will be delivered to students by bus routes from 9:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m., as it was during the last school year.

Parents gather outside Fulton County School board meeting

A group of parent who are against mandating masks for students in school buildings, held a protest during a school board meeting.

Last week, the district made the same decision with Church Street Elementary School.

Long and Ware counties as well as Macon, Taliaferro, Glascock and Talbot counties have all made the decision to stop in-person learning last week. While other districts, such as Fulton County, have re-implemented mandatory mask mandates. 

Those decisions come as Georgia is seeing its second-highest wave of COVID-19 cases as the more virulent delta strain has taken dominance and with vaccination rates still well belong the national average. 

Georgia hospitals under pressure as COVID-19 cases surge

Dr. Toomey of the Georgia Department of Public Health says hospitals across the state are being inundated with sick patients, many of them infected with the new delta variant.

As of Sunday afternoon, only 46.6% of Georgians 12 and older were vaccinated, according to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is well below the national average of 59.5%.

The two-week average as of Friday afternoon for new COVID-19 cases was at 5,226, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health, and more than 4,200 patients were in the hospital with the virus. Those are numbers not seen since the first week of February.

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