The FOX News medical contributor presses for a quick reopening as more people get the coronavirus vaccine.
The Los Angeles Unified School District officially launched the Daily Pass, an application designed to coordinate health checks, COVID tests and vaccines for the safe reopening of schools.
“Sort of like the golden ticket on ‘Willy Wonka’, everyone with this pass can easily enter a school building,” said LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner, during his weekly update on February 22.
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The Daily Pass, developed with support from Microsoft, generates a unique QR code for each student and team member that authorizes entry to a specific Los Angeles Unified location for that day only, as long as the individual receives a negative result on test for COVID, shows no symptoms and has a temperature below 100 degrees. After an individual arrives on campus, their QR code is scanned by a Los Angeles Unified school leader, who measures the individual’s temperature.
The Daily Pass will also be used by the Los Angeles Unified school vaccination program to record and schedule appointments, track vaccines in stock, perform check-in and data collection at the time of consultation, classify high-risk individuals, offer waiting lists for low people risk individuals and dashboards to view data, among other resources. All of this information is shared with the competent authorities.
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“Since last June, our teams have been collaborating closely with Los Angeles Unified to support school administration remotely,” said Microsoft corporate vice president of Windows products and education, Eran Meggido. “We are pleased to work with Los Angeles Unified to help educators, staff and students return to schools faster and more safely. We are delighted that you have started using the Daily Pass.”
According to Beutner, LAUSD is the first school district in the country to implement the technology, which allows school staff to monitor the health status of everyone within the district’s buildings.
“The Daily Pass sets the highest possible standard for school security,” said Beutner in a statement. “MERV-13 with updated air filters in all schools, COVID tests for all students and staff at least every week and now the Daily Pass – Los Angeles Unified is proud to lead the nation in creating the safest school environment possible.”
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LAUSD said the system is “tailor-made to accommodate the diverse types of people visiting a school campus on a given day and include functions linked to the COVID test and contact and vaccination tracking”. Although the app does not capture asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19, school officials hope to resolve the issue through weekly tests of students and staff.
Anonymous data from the Daily Pass will be used by Los Angeles Unified research and health collaborators – Stanford University, UCLA, The Johns Hopkins University, Anthem Blue Cross, Healthnet and Cedars Sinai – to provide ideas for strategies to create the most school environment safe as possible.
The Daily Pass will be available to all LAUSD employees, students aged 13 and over, and family members who use computers and mobile devices. Beutner added that the team will be assigned to the school’s entrances to assist in the process and that anyone without a phone or computer will be personally guided during the process.
Students, families and employees can access the Daily Pass at https://dailypass.lausd.net. Students and staff must use their Los Angeles Unified logins. Family members can log in using their Parent Portal accounts.
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The long-awaited action takes place at the time LAUSD aims to reopen schools on April 9. Beutner noted that while systems exist to vaccinate school staff in Hollywood Park, the government needs to do its part to make more doses of vaccine available.
“I am encouraged by recent actions by both the state legislature and the governor to help. Each has indicated that there will be more vaccines available for school officials,” said Beutner. “They must act urgently, as students cannot wait. We need a specific plan with a specific dose commitment for Los Angeles Unified so that we can protect our school staff and everyone in the school community. That’s what Chicago did and that’s what Long Beach did. We need to do this here. “
Following an announcement by the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, earlier this month, that at least 10% of the state’s vaccines would go to education workers from March 1, the governor’s office released a new plan on Thursday. fair outlining how the state will distribute vaccines to education workers.
Each week, the state will supply 75,000 doses to municipal education offices for distribution. Teachers and other education professionals will receive one-time codes to streamline online consultations. If so many vaccines are applied, it may take a few weeks for California’s 320,000 K-12 public school teachers to be vaccinated.
According to Newsom’s guidelines, elementary campuses may reopen when the county’s seven-day adjusted daily infection rate drops to less than 25 cases per 100,000 residents, a limit reached in LA County earlier this week.
However, the Unified Teachers of Los Angeles, the union representing the district’s teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians, argues that face-to-face education should not be resumed until cases drop to 7 per 100,000 when the county leaves ” purple layer “, meaning widespread broadcast community. While the union and district remain in talks about a safe return to campus, union members are scheduled to vote this week if they would object to a return to work order.
In the meantime, LAUSD will start offering childcare, individual and small group classes, services for students with special needs and a return to athletic conditioning starting this week.
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The United States has surpassed 28.5 million cases of COVID-19 and 513,000 related deaths as of Sunday, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. California reported a statewide total of more than 3.4 million COVID-19 cases and 51,979 related deaths
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported 1,064 new cases of COVID-19 and 107 new deaths on Sunday, bringing the total countywide to 1,191,923 cases and 21,345 deaths to date. There are 1,661 people in Los Angeles currently hospitalized with COVID-19, with 32% located in hospital intensive care units.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 75 million COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States by Sunday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report