SAN ANTONIO – Somerset High School teacher Terry White was concerned about returning to campus in the fall because of COVID-19.
“My wife has an autoimmune disease, which is called Myasthenia Gravis, and so if she catches COVID, mortality is pretty high in her condition,” White said.
Still, White returned to the classroom, but his son stayed home, learning virtually until COVID-19 testing started.
“Once they started catching potential cases and we could isolate those staff and students that were potential, I felt a lot better about it. It eased a lot of my fears completely,” White said.
The non-profit organization Community Labs began conducting mass testing for COVID-19 at Somerset ISD in September. Now, they are testing about 2,000 students and staff weekly.
“When we came back from the holidays, we had 54 students, I believe test positive for COVID-19, and then the following week, we had 15,” White said.
Somerset ISD Superintendent Saul Hinojosa said when they first started testing, about 39% of students were learning in-person, and now it’s about 70%.
And, on Jan. 2, Hinojosa also tested positive for COVID-19.
“It’s been an extremely tough time for me, just having those high fevers at night,” Hinojosa said. “It seems that I am at the endpoint here and I’ll be able to return to work, but there’s many people that I know, personal friends and family, that have lost their lives as a result of this terrible virus,” White said.
Testing is only mandatory for students who participate in extracurricular activities.
Hinojosa said Community Labs will be testing at Somerset ISD until the end of the school year.
Community Labs said it’s testing weekly at 181 school campuses, representing nine school districts.
Next week, they will begin testing Judson ISD as well.
RELATED: Texas is the first state to administer 1 million COVID-19 vaccines, Gov. Abbott says