It wasn’t easy for Jenny Hunter to send her kids back to school this fall, but she knew it was the better of two impossible choices for her family.
“I’m well aware of the clinical risks for children,” Hunter, a nurse and mother of two in Cherokee County, just outside Atlanta, told USA TODAY on Wednesday afternoon. “I’m not a teacher, and neither is my husband. I felt the benefit versus the risk was better to get them in person for their education.”
Minutes after hanging up, Hunter received a text from her son: His high school would be temporarily closing for two weeks after 14 students tested positive for the coronavirus.
“I was not surprised at all,” Hunter said. “My son was saying how low in volume some of his classes were throughout the day because of kids getting quarantined. It was becoming a question of when, not if.”
More than 1,600 students and staff are in quarantine this week as cases rise in Georgia – a state that has received criticism for its inaction and mixed signaling on the coronavirus pandemic.
Among the last states to institute a shelter-in-place order and the first to reopen businesses, Georgia is now seeing a rising number of COVID-19-related deaths. The state reported 136 deaths Tuesday – its most in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic – and another 109 deaths Wednesday, according to the state’s department of health.❐
