measures. they wanted to go online. but now with no remote learning, hundreds of thousands of children are caught in the middle just hours after president biden said this. we provided the states with 130 billion, with a billion, billion dollars to specifically keep our students safe and schools open. funding for ventilation, ventilation systems in the schools, social distancing in classrooms, even larger classrooms, on buses. everything from bus drivers to buses. so i encourage the states and cool districts to use the funding, but you still have to protect your children and keep the schools open. chicago had actually resumed in-person classes on monday, but school officials insist it is safe for in-person learning in class. the standoff could last foreweeks. cnn s omar jimenez starts us off in chicago. reporter: this vote from the chicago teachers union triggers a cancellation of class, which is what the school district warned would happen if this vote went through. in
here s what jerome adams had to say just a few minutes ago. rapid tests are very good on telling you if you are in cutely affected. get a rapid test if you can. the problem is, the administration is not delivered a rapid test. they don t want to put out a policy telling you to do something which then reflects blame back on them. dana: the cover of the near post, omnicrush. we have team fox coverage. must pick a good morning. with his take on casts in short supply, many americans are waiting in long lines where the covert positivity rate exceeds . the surgeon general is questioning the value of testing individuals who are asymptomatic or low risk for competition. we are going to be working to unwind the testing psychology that our federal leadership has managed to unfortunately that most of the country end. other health experts argue it s important to track asymptomatic cases because they can still be passed on to high risk individuals. that is renewing nationwide deba
this is nbc nightly news with lester holt. good evening no image tells us more about the state we are in with covid right now more clearly than the latest map of places with community transmissions. places where the virus is spreading locally they re highlighted in red. yes, it is the entire country. while it appears there is no outrunning this virus, this evening, there are new efforts to keep pace the fda okaying boosters for kids age 12 to 15 also shortening the booster wait time for many others. as we return from holiday breaks, it feels like the world is on rewind schools wrestling once more with how to safely teach our children, while travelers struggle to get home in the face of covid-related flight delays. their burden made worse by a major eastern snowstorm. we have it all covered tonight starting with stephanie gosk. reporter: with covid cases soaring to record levels, an uneasy return to schools, even though more vaccine protection could soon be available t
last two weeks, hospitalizations are growing at a much slower rate, just 35%. and the death rate may be the most important number has actually gone down. all of that is the backdrop for millions of kids heading back to school this morning, and confusion doesn t even begin to explain the feeling out there. some districts are bringing back masks, some are ramping up testing like here in new york city, while others are going virtual all over again. according to one data company, nearly 2,200 schools have announced that they are going to be closed starting today. bottom line, because there are no federal rules, schools, towns, districts, they have all their own rules, they are essentially on their own. that is why you ve got places like madison, wisconsin, where cases are up almost 50%, they re going virtual, but in houston where cases are up more than 600% over the last two weeks, schools there are open with masks and testing. and while covid is making a mess of the school situa
news for parents sending their children back to school today, that is, if the school is open. a number of district are returning to virtual learning not just because of exposure risk but because there aren t enough staffers to open. too many cases keeping too many people in isolation. here in new york city, though, public schools are open. mayor eric adams defying a call from the teachers union to go virtual. i am keeping my schools open and we re going to make sure that they re going to be in a safe place. that includes doubling the amount of testing that we re looking at. the science is showing us that because a child is exposed in a classroom, that entire classroom is not exposed. we did an amazing job over the weekend that many people don t know about. i put in place my team on wednesday. we were able to get over a million and a half test kits and deployed it to every school in the city. we did it in just a few days. okay. now here come the case numbers. brace yoursel