500K Coronavirus Tests Taken In NYC Schools, De Blasio Says

NEW YORK CITY — A new kind of testing that swept into New York City’s public schools during the coronavirus pandemic surpassed a significant milestone.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday said 500,000 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in the city’s schools.

The tests are part of strict safety standards the city set to reopen the nation’s largest school district amid the pandemic, de Blasio said.

He noted CDC guidelines closely hue to the city’s requirements of universal mask wearing, physical distancing, well-ventilated spaces and a combination of contact tracing, isolation and quarantine for when cases are detected.

“What we did became the gold standard for the entire United States of America,” he said.

De Blasio’s victory lap came on the eve of middle schools reopening for in-person learning.

The city may have been the largest school district to reopen amid the pandemic, but rising COVID-19 levels forced buildings to close in November.

Since then, 3-K, pre-K, K-5 and special need students who opted for in-person classes have returned to classrooms. The coronavirus positivity rate for the in-school testing program is 0.58 percent, according to the city's data.

The city's average coronavirus positivity is 7.15 percent as of Wednesday, de Blasio said.

Within schools, 30,000 teachers have also received coronavirus vaccines, de Blasio said.