PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A Rhode Island high school is moving to remote learning after several students tested positive for COVID-19, according to a letter from the district to parents.
The letter from North Kingstown High School officials said the school “has experienced a significant number of COVID positive cases among the high school students” last week, WPRI-TV reported Monday.
The district was told by the state Department of Health that “several” students attended in-person classes while contagious.
The school nurse has already worked to identify all possible close contacts of those students, but it is difficult to know many close contacts have since spread the virus to others, the letter said.
The district hopes to stop the spread by having all students out of the building for nine to 10 days.
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NEW CASES
The state Department of Health on Monday reported almost 1,000 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus and nine more virus-related deaths.
Of the new cases, 788 were positive tests from the past three days and the rest were positive tests from previous days.
The state now has had almost 131,500 known cases and 2,576 fatalities.
The department does not update on weekends.
The number of patients in the hospital with COVID-19 had fallen to 134 as of Saturday, down from 138 the previous day.
The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Rhode Island has dropped from about 354 on Feb. 27 to about 340 on Sunday, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins.
More than 273,000 people in the state have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine while more than 114,000 have been fully vaccinated, the department said.
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