Austin school hosts free COVID-19 testing site on campus for families, community
Austin school hosts free COVID-19 testing site
Austin Achieve Public Schools and Houston-based Dascena Labs have teamed up to help track COVID-19 in the community. FOX 7 Austin s Carissa Lehmkuhl has details.
AUSTIN, Texas - An Austin charter school and a Houston-based lab have teamed up to help track COVID-19 in the community.
For the past month, Austin Achieve Public Schools has conducted testing on their northeast campus. They saw the need when they realized their proximity to zip codes with higher COVID-19 rates.
We saw a migrating purple color on the dashboard beginning to move towards areas where our families lived, and that was a grave concern, said Ricardo Chavana, front office coordinator for the elementary school. We thought, what can we do about this?
Leaders of more than 15 Central Texas school districts and public charter schools on Thursday sent a letter to Dr. Mark Escott, interim Austin-Travis County health authority, asking him to prioritize teacher vaccinations and urge the state to include all school staff members in the next round of shots.
The signees, representing the Austin, Lake Travis, Pflugerville, Del Valle, Hays and Georgetown school districts, among others, educate more than 275,000 students in Central Texas.
The letter commends the work that Austin Public Health already has done and asks for local health officials to coordinate with providers to get vaccines to educators who are eligible for immunizations in Group 1B of the state’s vaccine rollout. The group comprises those over 65 and people with underlying health issues.