White House boosts COVID tests for schools amid case surge

With schools across the country straining to stay open amid a crush of COVID-19 cases, the White House announced Wednesday it will provide for an additional 10 million tests a month for the virus to help students, teachers and staff avoid spreading the highly contagious virus on campuses.

The additional testing capacity will more than double the volume of testing that took place in schools across the country in November 2021, the most recent data available, the administration said. The move comes amid frustration and criticism over widespread shortages of at-home and laboratory tests nationally as cases soar.

“Today the Biden-Harris Administration is doubling down on our commitment to keeping all schools safely open for full-time in-person learning by taking new action to increase access to COVID-19 testing in schools,” the White House said in a news statement.

The administration said it will distribute 5 million free, rapid tests to K-12 schools each month to help them sustain screening testing and test-to-stay programs, which lets students exposed to the virus remain in class as long as they wear face masks and test at least twice over the next seven days. States may submit requests to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for additional tests for high-need school districts, with the first shipments to be delivered later this month.

The administration also is making lab capacity available to support an additional 5 million of the molecular PCR tests per month for schools to perform individual and pooled testing in classrooms across the country. The additional testing will be delivered through a Department of Health and Human Services program funded by the American Rescue Plan to provide free PCR testing at schools nationwide.

How much of a difference will those tests make? In the last seven days, California administered 2.1 million of the molecular tests, New York 1.3 million and Florida 1.2 million, according to the CDC.

The federal government is providing 100% reimbursement for schools that set up diagnostic and screening testing programs.

Data tracking website Burbio, which has been publishing data on school openings and closures through the pandemic, reported Monday that there was “a continued rise in school disruptions as last week went on, driven by staff shortages.” Several thousand schools that were virtual or closed for parts of last week had planned to return to in-person learning this week.

In California, those included West Contra Costa and Oakland unified school districts, which closed schools temporarily due to staffing shortages.

Burbio’s data tracker showed a peak of 5,376 schools nationally where in-person learning was disrupted last week, the highest over the last school year, a figure that since has fallen to 3,193 this week.