With the rise of OMICRON, Americans prepare to return to school and work

In two brief weeks, as the year closed, the OMICRON variant brought the counting of coronavirus cases to record levels, upset air trips and left huge personnel gaps in the police departments, fire stations and hospitals.

And that was at a time when many people went on vacation.Now Monday comes, with millions of Americans who have traveled back home to start school and work again, and no one is sure what will come after.

The majority of the country's largest school districts have decided to move forward and remain open, at least for the moment, citing the cost that remote learning has had in the mental health and academic success of the students.And the growing number of cases has not yet been followed by a proportional increase in hospitalizations and deaths, although hospitalizations have increased in recent days, a sign that the OMICRON variant seems to cause less cases of serious illness.

But the highly contagious variant is still running throughout the country, and teachers, parents and workplaces are preparing for the impact.

COVID-19 test at a fire station in Washington, on December 29, 2021.While companies, schools and families end vacations to face a new pandemic wave, some wonder if life will be normal again.(Kenny Holston / The New York Times)

"I assumed that during these two weeks old, everyone has been visiting everyone," said Teresa Morrison, 48, who plans to prevent her 8 -year -old daughter, Tristan, who suffers from severe bronchitis, attend classesface -to -face.In San Antonio."So I really anticipate that January will be a disaster".

The rapid propagation of the OMICRON variant has left companies from all industries, from meat packaging to retail sale, with an increasingly reduced workforce, especially after months of record renunciations.Thousands of flights were canceled and National Guard troops were activated to help hospitals staff.

The increase in cases of cases has also baffled the dozens of companies that sent their employees to work from home in March 2020 when Covid was razing the country for the first time.Some offices that had reopened advised the workers to stay at home.Others, including important companies such as Apple and Google, have expanded their work agreements from home.

In schools, the propagation of COVID-19 has been limited, but Omicron has renewed some fears just when a sense of normality seemed to be within reach.

For many teachers, students and parents, the autumn semester seemed promising. A mediados de diciembre, Brayden Boren, un profesor de inglés de secundariaIn San Antonio, había comenzado a sentir que el fin de la larga y agotadora batalla contra la pandemia estaba a la vista.

Then, Omicron arrived in Texas.For the week of December 11, it represented about 25% of all new infections, according to state data.A week later, he shot at 85%.In the last two weeks, the number of new cases that are reported every day in Texas has increased by 240%.

Personnel of an ICU COVID-19 at a hospital in Saginaw, Michigan, December 15, 2021.Hospitalizations have also increased in the last two weeks, although so far at a much slower pace than in past waves.About 75.000 patients with coronavirus are hospitalized throughout the country.(Isadora Kosofsky / The New York Times)

Boren, 27, who has not had the virus, saw everything around him."Even in my little group of friends, they were appearing, one by one," he said."No one was understanding it so far".

Now Boren wonders if returning to learning in person makes any sense."It's a difficult time to be a teacher.How far can we strive?"

Health officials warned that unaccoured people are at a greater risk of serious illness or death due to OMICRON.More than 70% of people over 12 in the United States are completely vaccinated, according to disease control and prevention centers.Approximately a quarter of children between 5 and 11 years have received at least one dose of a vaccine.Children under 5 are not yet eligible to them.

For business leaders, constant change in public health conditions and guidelines has meant acclimatizing a new level of flexibility."They do not give you a strategy manual at Harvard Business School on Pandemia," said Yancey Spruill, executive director of the DigitaloCean Technology company, which told your staff that it will allow remote work indefinitely.

Throughout the country, workers were preparing for the months of interruptions that were coming.

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Students in a classroom in Minneapolis, November 22, 2021.As companies, schools and families end vacations to face a new pandemic wave, some wonder if life will once again be normal.(Andrea Ellen Reed / The New York Times)

"I've been working during most of the pandemic and had not positive before Omicron," said Amelia Smoak, 29, who works at a restaurant and bar in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan.It is completely vaccinated, but recently recovered from a slight case of Covid.He added that the business has become much slower as the number of cases increases: "The tips have remained stable, but the number of people was drastically reduced".

Scientists project that the strong increase in cases in the country will reach its maximum point in mid -January.But much of the new variant is still uncertain and experts are still concerned that hospitals can be overwhelmed.

The number of cases in New York continues to increase abruptly, however, city school officials have promised to keep schools open, adopting an increase in evidence as an alternative to the closure of classrooms.

Schools in Chicago, Washington and most other important cities have announced that they also plan to reopen this week, many with an increase in testing regimes.But some districts, including Cleveland public schools;Prince George County, Maryland, a Washington suburb;Newark, New Jersey;Mt.Vernon, New York;and Jersey City, New Jersey: will make the transition to remote learning for a week or more in January.

In Chicago, where companies have remained open as the cases have shot at their highest levels in the pandemic, public school leaders said they planned to return to classes as programmed on Monday despite the concerns of the powerfulTeacher union of the city about security precautions.

Passengers at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, December 30, 2021.Thousands of flights throughout the United States have been canceled in the last week, due in part to staff scarcity.(Bryan Anselm / The New York Times)

“If the restaurants close, all the events close, all the components of the city and the state, then, hey, I will not put my families at risk;I will not force them to take their children to school, ”said Pedro Martínez, executive director of the Public Schools of Chicago.“But apart from that, what is the logic of thinking that somehow will close schools will help this pandemic?I do not see the logic «.

Chicago Teacher Union officials have criticized the test plans, ventilation and staffing of the District, and expressed concern about the possibility of important cases among vaccinated employees.

Stacy Davis Gates, the vice president of the union, predicted chaos when classes resume on Monday.On Thursday, the union asked school officials to implement a series of new precautions, including the requirement that all students return den negative in the Covid-19 test or Pausen the instruction in person in the absence of generalized tests.

"We are very concerned about buildings with little personal," said Davis Gates."We are very concerned that parents lose confidence and do not send their children back to our school communities.".

Varias universidades del área de Chicago anunciaron inicios retrasados ​​o cambios al aprendizaje remoto, incluida la Universidad DePaul, la Universidad de Chicago y la Universidad Northwestern.

COVID-19 test in Norristown, Pennsylvania, December 23, 2021.As companies, schools and families end vacations to face a new pandemic wave, some wonder if life will once again be normal.(Kriston Jae Bethel / The New York Times)

Similar ads came from several important universities throughout the country, from the University of California's system to the University of New York, Syracuse and Binghamton in New York, which increased the number of schools and universities in the US.UU.That announce a change to remote instruction for part or for all.January to almost 50.

In Cleveland, the parents had been preparing for a possible remote instruction since the day before the winter holidays, when the district closed 14 of their 90 schools because the teachers and staff members were sick.The announcement occurred mid -week that the 35th district.000 students would begin their spring semester remotely, with Eric Gordon, the executive director of the district, citing a "dramatic increase" in the infection rate in Cleveland.

Ohio established records in recent days of both Covid infections and hospitalizations, which led the state governor, Mike Dewine, a Republican, to mobilize additional members of the Ohio National Guard to help in hospitals, one of several of severalstates to do it.

Stacey Caprinolo, whose daughter Genevieve, 15, is a second -year student at Cleveland School of the Arts, took the news of the remote return to classes calmly.But not knowing when classes resume made the uncertainty of the situation disturbing.

"It's a week by week.It's more difficult to plan, ”said Caprinolo.

When moving to remote learning, Cleveland and several districts in the city's suburbs were opposed to the state's republican leadership, which had urged regular school sessions.

For some parents, returning to work was the least of their concerns.

Kelli Gay's Christmas season stopped abruptly with two telephone calls in mid -December.

Both her husband and her eldest son had been exposed to Covid-19 at Christmas parties separated in Florida.It would not spend much time before the whole family, two parents and three children, gave positive for the virus, which returned them to the reality of the lasting presence of the pandemic.All of them had been vaccinated at least in part.

"We still had our masks, but we were relating to the people again and attended events," said Gay, 45, director of grants at the port of Miami who lost two relatives for Covid in 2020."Then we receive phone calls".

The test results precipitated a quiet Christmas, but Gay faced a major crisis: what to do with their three school -age children when the school resumes on Monday?

The school district where Gay lives in Miramar, Florida, where the cases have shot dramatically, does not offer virtual alternatives.And the State approved a law that authorizes parents, instead of school districts, to decide if their children use a mask at school.That means that your children may be in classes with students without a mask during this last wave.

"High anxiety would be the way I would describe what I am feeling," he said."So now our hopes are based on enforcing home rules, that children remain masked at school, keep the distance and a small bottle of hand disinfectant in their backpacks".