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Covid-19: Darien School District Announces Delayed Start For First Day Of Classes After Break

A school district in Fairfield County announced a change in the starting time for the first day of classes of the new calendar year amid a climb in cases as the highly contagious COVID-19 Omicron strain becomes more prevalent.

COVID-19

COVID-19

Photo Credit: CDC

Darien Public Schools Superintendent Alan Addley announced a two-hour delayed opening schedule on Monday, Jan. 3 to provide teachers with the opportunity to prepare remote and in-person learning for their students "given the expected but undetermined number of students to be quarantined."

On Friday, Dec. 31, Westport Schools Superintendent Thomas Scarice said the district will extend the winter break by one day for all students and that Monday will not be a school day for students. All faculty and staff will report on Monday.

"This will enable the district to work collaboratively to develop a range of responses to the changing conditions over the coming weeks," Westport Scarice said

Last week, a pediatrician who is an expert on disease and vaccine development sounded the alarm about the ability of schools to resume in-person learning during the height of the new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic sparked by a surge of cases from the highly contagious Omicron variant.

"Here's the problem," Hotez said in an interview on MSNBC. "We're kind of going off old information what it's been like for the previous variants, the previous lineages.

"Omicron's a different animal. Omicron is so highly transmissible at a level of transmissibility around the level potentially of measles, which is the most transmissible common virus agent we know."

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