Coronavirus Today: A new classroom math problem

Good evening. I’m Melody Petersen, and it’s Thursday, April 8. Here’s what’s happening with the coronavirus in California and beyond.

It’s been a long, frustrating year for children and parents in Los Angeles, where public school classrooms have been closed since last March. Instruction via laptops set up on kitchen tables and bedroom floors has been no substitute with students losing focus and grades suffering.

A group of parents has had enough. They filed a lawsuit late Wednesday, trying to force L.A. Unified to return quickly to in-person education, writes my colleague Howard Blume.

The four parents say their children have been illegally shortchanged by the district’s return-to-school plan, which begins next week and requires students to continue to do many hours of remote learning.

A sore point for the plaintiffs is the district’s plan to keep students socially distanced by six feet, which sharply reduces the number of kids that can fit in each classroom.

In order to keep them six feet apart, the district plans to reopen with a schedule that brings elementary students to campus on a half-time basis and provides supervised online instruction on campus for middle and high school students. The lawsuit says those plans would be harmful and legally inadequate.

“There is no reason Plaintiffs’ children should have to suffer through shorter school days with limited instructional hours … while other similarly situated students throughout California — and even in Los Angeles County — enjoy a full schedule of in-person learning five days per week,” the suit states. “LAUSD schoolchildren and their families are suffering irreparable harm each day that their schools remain closed for in-person instruction.”

The school district is using a six-foot separation rule even though the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that three feet is enough to keep children safe.

In practical terms, the difference between three and six feet is stark. A three-foot distance would essentially allow a full classroom.

The plaintiffs describe in the lawsuit how their children have become academically and socially disengaged since their campuses were closed more than a year ago, suffering poor grades and psychological trauma.

One parent, identified by the initials D.R., describes a young son who used to be happy and make good grades. But now the boy “has difficulty connecting with other students that he only sees through Zoom and gets angry, lashes out, acts disrespectfully, and has no motivation to do anything other than play video games. He has gained weight, is lonely, and has expressed suicidal thoughts to both of his parents.”

The parents, who have joined together under the name California Students United, say on their website that they could no longer wait for the nation’s second-largest school system to return to a normal schedule.

They are asking the court to force the district to reopen “to the greatest extent possible” within seven days.

Many other L.A. parents have a starkly different view on whether their children should return to the classroom.

An ongoing district survey shows that parents in communities hit hardest by COVID-19 have decided to keep their children home in greater numbers than parents in neighborhoods that have suffered less.

Although the district did not provide an immediate comment, Supt. Austin Beutner has defended the district’s safety measures, saying they are needed not only to safeguard students but also to build confidence among parents and employees.

“Our challenge is convincing families that schools are safe,” Beutner said recently, “not finding ways to stuff more kids into classrooms.”

Want to read more about kids, parents, schools and the policy decisions that determine what happens with them? Sign up for my colleague Sonja Sharp’s newsletter, and read its first edition here.

By the numbers

California cases, deaths and vaccinations as of 6 p.m. Thursday:

Track California’s coronavirus spread and vaccination efforts — including the latest numbers and how they break down — with our graphics.

Across California

California won’t officially open eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine to everyone 16 and older until April 15. But as vaccine supplies have increased, a rising number of inoculation sites across the state are finding they have unfilled appointments. And that has led some officials to make doses available to all adults, even those not yet eligible under current rules.

It’s like Bakersfield, but closer.

The city of Long Beach and a large vaccination site at Cal State Los Angeles were among the most recent to throw open their doors because of excess supply.

At Cal State L.A., thousands of appointments went unclaimed through the My Turn registration system. As a result, officials briefly began accepting any adults who walked up to the site without an appointment — including those who don’t qualify under the current rules, said Brian Ferguson, a spokesman with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

But as word spread about the available vaccine, the site was quickly flooded with walk-ins. On Thursday morning, so many hopefuls lined up that extra doses ran out and people were turned away. The site will now turn away adults who don’t have an appointment, officials said Thursday evening.

Through the weekend, “the only way to assure yourself of a vaccine is to make an appointment ahead of time,” Ferguson said. Staffers at the site are telling people that they must have an appointment to get a shot.

Leaders of the state’s theaters, music groups and other performing arts organizations are scrambling to determine what they can do by June 15 — the date set by state officials this week for the economy’s reopening — to bring back performances indoors.

My colleague Jessica Gelt writes of the questions the arts community is now joyfully confronting: What needs to happen for audience members to sit safely side by side? What programming is (or isn’t) lined up? Do staff need to be rehired? How much rehearsal might be necessary, and when can that start? Is the building ready to reopen for semi-normal operations?

Many arts groups had already been making plans to attempt small, socially distanced outdoor performances. In L.A. County, which sits in the orange tier, outdoor venues are being allowed to reopen at 33% capacity. The unexpectedly quick timeline for a return to business as usual indoors has resulted in some whiplash.

“What a day, what a week. I can’t keep up,” joked Pasadena Playhouse Artistic Director Danny Feldman. “This is very exciting for all of us looking forward to the return of arts and culture in L.A.”

The statewide June reopening date depends on hospitalizations remaining low. And public health officials have warned that cases could rise again if more infectious coronavirus variants spread in the state.

Two potentially dangerous variants have been found in L.A. County for the first time, announced Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.

The county found one case of a person infected with B.1.351, also referred to as the South Africa variant, and three cases involving P.1, a variant first identified in Brazil.

Both are among the five “variants of concern” identified by the CDC.

“The identification of these variants highlights the need for L.A. County residents to continue to do everything we can to take measures to protect ourselves and others,” Ferrer said.

Of the 70 specimens recently tested by the county’s public health lab, 42 turned out to be another concerning variant — B.1.1.7, from the United Kingdom.

The U.K. variant is particularly worrisome. It’s thought to be about 50% more transmissible than older viral strains, and there’s some evidence to suggest it’s as much as 61% more likely to cause severe disease or death.

See the latest on California’s coronavirus closures and reopenings, and the metrics that inform them, with our tracker.

Around the nation and the world

New research highlights COVID-19’s lingering effects on the brain, finding that in the six months after becoming ill, roughly a third of surviving patients were diagnosed with at least one neurological or psychiatric disorder, writes Times science reporter Melissa Healy.

The neuropsychiatric ailments that followed COVID-19 ranged from stroke and dementia to anxiety disorders and sleep disturbances. Virtually all were more common among those who became sick enough to be hospitalized. The risk was higher still for those admitted to intensive care.

But even those who were not hospitalized were more likely to get a diagnosis for one or more neuropsychiatric disorders than were people who had suffered a bout of flu or another respiratory illness, according to a study published this week in the journal Lancet Psychiatry.

“This paper is important because it’s the largest data set anyone has looked at,” said Dr. Avindra Nath, who conducts research on the brain and immune system at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “In that sense, it’s huge.”

Increasing numbers of patients who appear to have recovered from COVID-19 are seeking care for a persistent constellation of symptoms, including disturbances of mood, cognition and sensation. The phenomenon, which affected patients call “long COVID,” threatens to prolong the pandemic’s impact.

Worldwide, close to 130 million have had confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections and survived. And the disease is now surging even in some countries that have kept the virus in check.

Brazil this week became just the third country, after the U.S. and Peru, to report a 24-hour tally of COVID-19 deaths that exceeded 4,000.

India hit a peak of almost 127,000 new cases in 24 hours, and Iran set a new coronavirus infection record for the third straight day, reporting nearly 22,600 new cases.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to get vaccinated, writing in a tweet: “Vaccination is among the few ways we have to defeat the virus. If you are eligible for the vaccine, get your shot soon.”

The U.S. has fully vaccinated nearly 20% of its adult population, and New Mexico became the first state to have gotten shots in the arms of 25% of its residents.

Britain’s COVID-19 vaccination program is beginning to break the link between infection and serious illness or death, according to the latest results from an ongoing study of the pandemic.

Researchers at Imperial College London found that infections in England dropped about 60% in March as lockdown measures slowed the spread of the coronavirus. People 65 and older were the least likely to be infected as they benefited most from the vaccination program, which initially focused on older people.

Your questions answered

Today’s question comes from readers who want to know: Can businesses require customers to show proof of vaccination?

The answer is yes, in most cases.

Businesses can’t discriminate on the basis of disability, and certain establishments — such as hotels, movie theaters, restaurants, sports arenas and concert halls — are prohibited from discriminating on the grounds of race, color, religion or national origin.

But otherwise, businesses have the right to conduct transactions with whomever they choose — just as the “No shirt, no shoes, no service” signs suggest, lawyers say.

“No vaccine, no service” could be next.

Proof could take the form of the CDC vaccine card handed out by the clinic at the time of the shot, or it could be accessed digitally as part of a broader “vaccine passport” system.

Businesses would have to try to provide reasonable accommodations for customers who can’t be vaccinated because of a disability or sincere religious beliefs before they can refuse service, according to attorneys.

The idea of a virtual passport remains controversial because it raises questions of equity, logistics, privacy and the possibility of fostering a false sense of security.

The Republican governor of Texas this week issued an executive order stating that government agencies cannot require such proof of the public. Nor can private businesses or institutions that receive state funding. Florida’s governor, also a Republican, signed a similar order.

The White House has said it won’t back a federal vaccine passport.

We want to hear from you. Email us your coronavirus questions, and we’ll do our best to answer them. Wondering if your question’s already been answered? Check out our archive here.