Massachusetts Schools Emphasize Covid Testing Following February Vacation

BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — February vacation week is officially over and students are going back to school; but before they do, they will need to make sure they're clear from Covid-19.

For families that traveled on vacation during the break, they have the option to either quarantine for two weeks or produce a negative Covid-19 test result if their students intend to return to in-person learning.

Several school districts across the Commonwealth also ramped up testing availability over the weekend to accommodate for students to be able to return sooner this week.

The move comes as the state is planning to expand it's testing program for more schools this week, including the use of pool testing, which is a system where multiple Covid-19 tests are placed in the same "batch," and if the batch comes back positive, each person then gets an individual test to confirm which people have the virus.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker said hundreds of schools are showing interest in joining that expanded program -- which aims to speed up the testing process for students and staff across the state and safely bring people back to in-person classrooms.

WBZ NewsRadio's James Rojas (@JamesRojasWBZ) reports.

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