'I Feel Responsible': Vegas Schools Seek Reopening After Suicides

LAS VEGAS, NV — Whether schools should have in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic has been one of the most-discussed controversies of the past 10 months.

Arguments against it include preventing the spread of the virus itself, while some in favor hope to prevent the tragedies that have come in the wake of remote.

In the Clark County, Nevada, school district that includes Las Vegas, the nation's fifth largest, the 18 suicides reported over the first nine months after schools closed in March is double the nine of the entire previous year, Superintendent Jesus Jara told The New York Times.

One student left a note saying he had nothing to look forward to. Another was only 9 years old.

“When we started to see the uptick in children taking their lives, we knew it wasn’t just the COVID numbers we need to look at anymore,” Jara said. “We have to find a way to put our hands on our kids, to see them, to look at them. They’ve got to start seeing some movement, some hope.”

It's not easy to tie coronavirus-related school closures to suicides, the Times article notes. Complete data for suicides in 2020 is not yet available; but Greta Massetti of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked the two.

There's "definitely reason to be concerned because it makes conceptual sense," she told the Times, noting that millions of children have relied on schools for mental health services that had been made impossible by the closures.

Just this month, schools in the Las Vegas district are able to phase in some form of return for elementary school students, the Times has reported. The move comes even as cases and deaths in the region continue to surge.

“I feel responsible,” Jara said. “They’re all my kids.”

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The Latest

National coronavirus numbers — cases, hospitalizations and deaths — are on a downward trend, but the nation's top health officials are warning Americans not to let their guard down.

Over the past week, new daily cases have fallen 21.7 percent, new daily deaths are down 8.3 percent, and COVID-19-related hospitalizations fell 11.1 percent, according to the data from The Washington Post.

As of Monday, deaths were running at an average of just under 3,100 a day, down from more than 3,350 less than two weeks ago, according to The Associated Press. New cases were averaging about 170,000 a day after peaking at almost 250,000 on Jan. 11. The number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital in the U.S. has fallen to about 110,000 from a high of 132,000 on Jan. 7.

The virus has killed over 419,000 Americans and caused more than 25 million confirmed infections in the United States. Health experts have warned that the British variant will probably become the dominant source of infection in the U.S. by March. It has been reported in over 20 states.

"We don't want to get complacent and think, 'Oh, things are going in the right direction, we can pull back a bit,'" Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, told the AP.

He said scientists are already preparing to upgrade COVID-19 vaccines to address the mutated versions that erupted in Britain and South Africa.

Fauci said there is "a very slight, modest diminution" of the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against those variants, but "there's enough cushion with the vaccines that we have that we still consider them to be effective" against both.

Some states are beginning to ease restrictions due to the declining numbers — such as California, which has become the "epicenter" of the pandemic in the United States in recent months.

Gov. Gavin Newsom abruptly lifted California's regional stay-at-home order on Monday.

With the cancellation of the order, the state returned to its original system of county-by-county restrictions intended to mitigate the spread of the virus. The state also lifted a 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew.

"California is slowly starting to emerge from the most dangerous surge of this pandemic yet, which is the light at the end of the tunnel we've been hoping for," Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state's health secretary, said in a Monday morning statement. He added: "Our surge after the December holidays did not overwhelm the health care system to the degree we had feared."

As another week began, the United States surpassed 25 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Totals from Johns Hopkins University show the country reached the number late Sunday morning.

With about 4 percent of the world's population, the United States has accounted for about a quarter of the confirmed coronavirus cases across the globe.

As the case total climbs past 25 million, more states are reporting their first cases of the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant that was first discovered — and now spreading — in the United Kingdom.

All athletic games and practices have been canceled indefinitely at the University of Michigan after the variant was found in five athletes. Washington state is among the other states to have reported its first variant cases in recent days.

In many areas, hospitals remain strained due to the virus.

An Associated Press analysis of federal hospital data shows that since November, the share of U.S. hospitals nearing the breaking point has doubled. More than 40 percent of Americans now live in areas running out of ICU space, with only 15 percent of beds still available.

Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, spoke over the weekend about dealing with virus deniers inside the White House.

“Someone out there or someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president," Birx told The Associated Press.

Newest Numbers

At least 749 deaths and 84,063 new cases of coronavirus were reported in the United States on Monday as of 2:45 p.m. ET, according to a Washington Post database. The Post's reporting shows that over the past week, new daily cases fell 21.7 percent, new daily deaths fell 8.3 percent and COVID-19-related hospitalizations fell 11.1 percent.

Currently, 110,628 people are hospitalized with a coronavirus-related illness in the United States, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

As of Monday, 41 states and U.S. territories remained above the positive testing rate recommended by the World Health Organization to safely reopen. To safely reopen, the WHO recommends states remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

As of Monday afternoon, the United States had reported more than 25.1 million cases and more than 419,600 deaths from COVID-19-related illnesses, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Stay up to date on the latest coronavirus news via The New York Times or The Washington Post.

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