With COVID on the Rise, Will Students Need Masks in Shreveport?

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I'm sure you remember what life was like when the plant was in the unrelenting grip of the COVID-19 Pandemic.  The quarantines, the shutdowns, and the masks - oh the masks!  Everyone seemed to have a strong opinion about the when, where, how, and why we should/shouldn't wear facemasks - and boy, did we share those opinions.  Thankfully, we are well past the COVID-19 threat now - right? Not so fast.

NOLA.com is reporting that health officials are carefully watching an uptick in daily case counts and are concerned that Louisiana is currently experiencing a "sixth wave" of COVID-19 infections.  Experts think that this so-called "wave within a wave," is due to sub-variants of the Omicron variant of the original coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

According to a report from the ArkLaTex Homepage, local school officials are watching the situation very closely.  Administrators with the Bossier, Caddo, Claiborne, Red River, Sabine, and Webster Parish school systems have been monitoring the infection rates, too.  So far, no decision has been made in those parishes to require any additional precautions or safety measure to be taken.  That means, for now, masks won't be required for students or faculty at schools in these parishes.

We're not out of the woods just yet.  The start of the school year in the ArkLaTex is still a few weeks away, and who knows what will happen.  If infection and hospitalization rates continue to climb at the rate they are now, school officials could very well put all-too-familiar policies in place to mitigate the spread of the virus.