Tuscaloosa City Schools Temporarily Implements Mask Mandate

Tuscaloosa City Schools has officially implemented a temporary mask mandate for students and faculty due to a sharp increase in positive COVID-19 cases.

TCS adopted a policy back in October 2021 that set a 1% two-week threshold for positive student case rate to determine the use of masks in the schools. This week serves as the second week in the calculation for the first two-week period of the semester.

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Just three days prior to this decision, the two-week average was trending at just 1.55%. On Thursday, that current student positive rate was 2.14%.

While the "mask required" order goes into effect on Monday, January 18, students and employees are highly recommended to begin wearing masks starting now.

TCS will review the mask mandate again on January 28. Should the positive rate fall below 1%, students and faculty will revert to "masks optional."

However if the percentage remains above 1%, masks will remain required.

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Alabama COVID-19 Vaccine Breakdown (June 2021)

Each graphic shows how many people are vaccinated in all of Alabama's 67 counties, plus the percentage of vaccinated people versus that county's total population. This data was pulled from the Alabama Department of Public Health, county health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Vaccinations for COVID-19 began being administered in the U.S. on Dec. 14, 2020. The quick rollout came a little more than a year after the virus was first identified in November 2019. The impressive speed with which vaccines were developed has also left a lot of people with a lot of questions. The questions range from the practical—how will I get vaccinated?—to the scientific—how do these vaccines even work?

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