As more school districts across the country are mandating that their students take the experimental and deadly COVID-19 vaccines, the latest data shows that the coronavirus is actually spreading faster through schools with high vaccination rates.
This is the case in Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF), a public high school in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. As of Sept. 9, the school has 17 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Four of the cases are from employees, and the rest are from students.
According to OPRF's COVID-19 data, 79 percent of students and 88 percent of teachers and staff are fully vaccinated.
"Earlier in the pandemic, the overall target for approaching herd immunity was 70 percent of our population fully vaccinated," said the school in a statement. "However, the delta variant has changed the equation. According to our most recent guidance, we should aim for a fully vaccinated rate of closer to 90 percent or higher."
Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has mandated all school teachers and staff get vaccinated as a condition of employment. The same rule applies to college students. K-12 students are not included in this mandate, but they are strongly encouraged. (Related: TARGETING CHILDREN: Los Angeles school district mandates COVID-19 vaccines for students 12 and up.)
A little over a dozen cases in one public high school in Chicago's suburbs is not on its own alarming. But it adds to all the data being gathered showing fully vaccinated individuals contracting COVID-19.
This is especially the case for younger individuals, as many have concerns about whether or not it is beneficial for them to get COVID-19 vaccinations even though people under 18 are significantly less likely to contract the coronavirus, let alone suffer any debilitating effects from it.
Coronavirus still spreading through Chicago public schools
As of Wednesday, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has logged 245 cases of COVID-19 among its students, teachers and staff.
The cases come after CPS launched a program to provide free coronavirus tests in all schools for students, teachers and other staff who sign up for it. This weekly program is offering nasal swabs at 170 schools, but CPS officials hope to expand that to all of the more than 500 schools within the Chicago school district.
"The district is in the process of ramping up to provide COVID-19 testing of staff and students with signed consent to 100 percent of schools on a weekly basis. We are currently on target to test at 170 schools this week with full implementation by the end of the month," said CPS in a statement. "We are working diligently to expand testing capacity and, in the meantime, encourage all students and staff members to opt-in to the testing program."
The testing program has only signed up around 9,400 students out of a population of over 340,000, and 6,200 staff members out of nearly 40,000. This is entirely voluntary except for unvaccinated staff members and unvaccinated and partially vaccinated student-athletes during sports seasons.
The program conducted nearly 2,200 tests from Aug. 29 to Wednesday. Ninety-six of the results were deemed invalid, and 245 tests were positive – 155 from students and 90 from adults.
CPS has refused to divulge how many of those cases come from fully vaccinated students and staff and how many come from the unvaccinated.
If most of the new COVID-19 cases came from the unvaccinated population, the school district would be using it as a propaganda tool to scare people into getting vaccinated. Because of CPS's reluctance to divulge the vaccination statuses of the active cases, a high proportion of them likely come from the vaccinated population.
The CPS is busy tracking down all of the close contacts of the recent COVID-19 cases and forcing the unvaccinated among them to quarantine. Fully vaccinated close contacts are not being directed to quarantine for the standard 14-day period.
Learn more about the spread of coronavirus through schools with high vaccination rates by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.
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