COVID-19 Cases Surge as Students Return to School

“Start Your Day” host Sharon Reed said hospital intensive care units are filling up as nearly 94,000 children contracted COVID-19 in the past week, higher than any other time during the pandemic.

In Louisiana, 45.94% of ICU beds are being used for COVID-19 patients, including at New Orleans Children’s Hospital, where a three-month-old and 23-month-old are fighting the virus. The spike comes as children are going back to school, but Dr. Henderson Lewis, superintendent of NOLA public schools, told Reed on “Start Your Day” that a lot of the active cases didn’t happen at their schools. He said it’s important to go ahead and quarantine students and if things don’t start looking up soon, school officials will consider all students going back to virtual learning. In terms of students not wanting to or refusing to wear masks, Lewis said, “Our teachers are great, they work with our students' day in and day out, even before we encountered COVID in our community. Our teachers have done an amazing job last school year as we went back to school and in-person learning,” adding that they worked with students to make sure they understood the importance of protecting themselves and their classmates. Lewis said schools are still following protocols from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including social distancing, sanitizing frequently, implementing a testing program for students and educators and offering the COVID-19 vaccine for eligible individuals.

All this and more on “Start Your Day.”

To watch BNC programming, visit

Follow BNC on social media:

#COVID-19 #DrHendersonLewis #BackToSchool