Chicago Public Schools said Thursday 1,101 students and 342 adults have contracted COVID-19 in the first month of school as the district announced it is expanding its voluntary coronavirus testing program to all CPS schools by Friday.

       The case numbers, for the period from Aug. 29 to Wednesday, reflect a change in the way CPS is reporting its data. CPS said it expanded the criteria to include all reported cases, not just cases its contact tracing team investigated and closed. The district on Wednesday reported 650 student cases and 207 adult cases this school year via its online dashboard.

       Some 6,300 students and 280 adults were in quarantine or isolation as of Wednesday evening, per the new CPS data. CPS has not released its enrollment numbers for this school year, but it boasted 341,000 students last year.

       “We’re seeing about five in a thousand people in that CPS ecosystem being diagnosed with COVID. That is not an unexpected number. It is well in line with what we are seeing in other school districts, and it is not significantly out of line with what we are seeing at the community rate, despite there being quite a bit more testing,” Chicago public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Thursday at a news conference.

       Chicago public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady, left, and Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez speak to reporters during a news conference on Sept. 30, 2021. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

       The news comes one month after CPS welcomed students back full time and in person for the first time since the pandemic took hold in Chicago in March 2020. The district has been under fire by the Chicago Teachers Union and some parents who said the protocols in place at CPS schools — indoor masking, social distancing of 3 feet where possible and voluntary weekly testing — are not enough.

       “We had an agreement last winter that spoke to needs of our school communities, and we still need an agreement to speak to these needs,” the union tweeted Thursday as bargaining continued between both sides.

       Arwady defended CPS’ safety plans and said there have been no COVID-19 outbreaks at any CPS schools. The district was criticized after it was reported that two Jensen Elementary Scholastic Academy parents died last week of COVID-19.

       One woman, who would have turned 45 years old on Thursday, died Sept. 23 of pneumonia due to COVID-19 infection with diabetes and hypertension as contributing factors, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. A cause of death for the second woman, who is in her 30s, is pending additional test results. That woman died Sept. 24, according to the medical examiner’s office.

       CPS has reported eight cases at Jensen Elementary since the start of the school year, with 205 close contacts identified. The Lawndale school is said to have about 300 students.

       CPS said it partnered with Lurie Children’s Hospital to offer on-site COVID-19 testing at Jensen. Arwady said “two borderline positive” results were recorded this week from more than 100 tests.

       “There was nothing in the follow-up testing that suggested that there was undetected or widespread or other examples of transmission within that school,” Arwady said.

       CPS has its own weekly testing program, which is supposed to be mandatory only for unvaccinated and half-vaccinated student-athletes during their sports seasons and unvaccinated staff members. CPS told parents on Tuesday it is delaying the student-athlete requirement indefinitely to give schools “additional time to establish a consistent testing schedule.”

       The program was slated to be up and running in all schools by Sept. 1. CPS said its testing vendor, Thermo Fisher Scientific, has planned for COVID-19 testing to be available at every CPS school by Friday.

       Nearly 31,000 people have registered for the program, per the district. CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who started the job Wednesday, said he will work directly with schools to increase the number of sign-ups.

       More than 14,000 nasal swabs have been administered through the program this school year, with 17 positive tests and more than 650 invalid results recorded, according to CPS’ online COVID-19 reporting tool.

       The dashboard was revamped Thursday. The district has been inconsistent with the type of data it has provided and the frequency of its updates to that page.

       “On our website, we will be reporting out cases daily. We will be more complete. We will not only just show active cases, we’ll show quarantine. Please give us some grace. Because it is daily, that means there will be some cleanup of data,” Martinez said.

       CPS said its dashboard will now reflect reported cases of COVID-19 among district staff members and students within 24 hours of the report, self-reported cases and positive COVID-19 results found through CPS’ testing program. The numbers now include cases where an investigation has not yet started or is in progress.

       The district used to share the number of people determined to be close contacts of a person who tested positive. CPS has been defining a close contact as someone who came within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes in a 24-hour period, while wearing or not wearing mask. CPS had identified 17,913 close contacts this school year through Wednesday.

       CPS is now saying that in a classroom setting, a close contact is a student who was within 3 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes in a 24-hour period, with or without a mask. Close contacts are directed to quarantine for 14 calendar days, unless they are fully vaccinated and asymptomatic. The vaccine is only available to people 12 years and older.

       Instead of close contact data, the district is now providing the number of people who are in isolation because they tested positive and the number of people who are in quarantine because they were determined to be a close contact of an infected person.

       The district also announced it is in the process of doubling the number of contact tracers. CPS initially said it had 24 contact tracers to start the year. Interim Chief Education Officer Maurice Swinney said Thursday the district has more than 30 contact tracers, in addition to 30 staff members who have been redeployed to handle contact tracing duties. Swinney said turnaround time for contact tracing is 24 to 48 hours, and that procedure has been refined over time.

       “We looked at the questions. We’ve tweaked the questions to make sure that we’re asking more intentional questions. We have seating charts for classrooms, so we know exactly where people are during the school day, so that has reduced the amount of time that’s needed to do contact tracing,” Swinney said.

       Tribune’s Alice Yin and Tatyana Turner contributed.

       tswartz@tribpub.com

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