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Coronavirus cases are already surfacing in K-12 schools that have reopened, but the federal government is not tracking these outbreaks, and some states are not publicly reporting them, making it more difficult to determine how the virus is spreading, experts say.
Scores of students and staff members have been quarantined because of potential COVID-19 exposure in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Indiana, among other states.
But there is no official national tally of school-linked COVID-19 cases, and some states are not reporting how many outbreaks have occurred or how many students and staff members have been infected. Instead, they are leaving it up to local officials to decide which information to make public and which information to share more narrowly with affected students and families. Researchers say the absence of a comprehensive accounting is hampering efforts to identify which safety practices can best prevent cases in schools from spreading.
Without good data that tracks cases over time and shows how one case turns into many cases there's just no way to answer that question, said Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University and co-founder of COVID Explained, a team of researchers studying the pandemic. In January, we'll be in the same position that we are in now, and kids still won't be in school.
At least nine states including Alabama, California and Pennsylvania are tracking school-linked coronavirus cases and outbreaks, but wont make this data public, according to an NBC News tally of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Many of these states cited privacy concerns for withholding the data. Some claimed that coronavirus data on schools was not critical to protecting the broader public, and said their policies might change in the future if there was a clear public health reason for providing such information.
At least 15 other states have begun publishing data on school-based outbreaks, or have committed to doing so, according to the NBC News survey. Seven states said they were still deliberating their plans, and the remainder did not respond to a request for comment.
Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak
Even among the states that have committed to sharing data, there are major gaps and inconsistencies in reporting policies. Each state sets its own definition for an outbreak usually a certain number of cases linked to a single site. Most said they would not specify the district or school that was affected, citing privacy concerns. And only a handful of states said they would report the actual numbers of infected students and staff.
A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the agency was not tracking school-based COVID-19 cases, and the Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.
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Beyond the researchers concerns, educators and parents are worried about whether theyll be told about positive cases that could threaten their safety not only at their schools, but in neighboring areas as well. School administrators fear the lack of comprehensive data could feed unnecessary panic by making it hard to determine whether a news story about an individual school outbreak is an outlier or a sign of impending danger.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called on all states to gather and release this data, since the federal government is not doing so.
The Trump administration has shamefully tried to keep America in the dark on COVID-19, so it's doubly important for states to ignore the political bluster and commit to delivering the truth about the virus' spread, Weingarten said in a statement in response to NBC News findings. While some school districts are doing their best to inform teachers, families and children, we're hoping states get with the program and deliver the transparency they deserve as schools gradually begin to reopen their doors."
In the absence of comprehensive state or federal data, some researchers are stepping in to gather information themselves.
Oster, the Brown University economist, is working with the School Superintendents Association, which represents school officials, to develop a dashboard that collects the latest information directly from individual districts to help inform administrators and academics. It would include not just the number of positive cases in schools, but also the size of the student body, how many students and staff are in quarantine at a given moment, and changes in cases over time.
The goal is to track infections, and also to discern quickly which regions and schools are faring better at preventing and containing outbreaks and whether their safety procedures were responsible for the difference. Such information could also help parents decide whether to send their children to school or keep them at home for remote learning, Oster said.
The only evidence thats really going to be informative is what happens when we open schools, she said. Whether its the right decision or not, once schools are open it would be a shame not to use that as an opportunity to learn how to do this.
Other institutions are also trying to fill in gaps with their own reporting. The Indianapolis Star launched a searchable database of positive cases at schools after the state government started the school year without making the information public. (Indianas Health Department said it is working on a public dashboard for school-linked cases, but did not provide a timeline or details on what data would be included.)
One Kansas teacher even created a Google spreadsheet for educators and parents to track news reports of cases and quarantines in schools.
While other countries have reopened schools sooner and more widely than the U.S., they also have not comprehensively tracked cases and outbreaks among children, which makes it harder to offer guidance to schools in the U.S., said Annette C. Anderson, an assistant professor and deputy director of the Center for Safe and Healthy Schools at Johns Hopkins University. International studies of COVID-19 spread in classrooms have been limited in scope, typically in countries where the pandemic has been less prevalent than in the U.S.
Were only beginning to start understanding the transmission of COVID in children, Anderson said. Its important for us to have a great assemblance of data.
According to Anderson, researchers have run into trouble in finding data on children that uses consistent standards. A recent American Academy of Pediatrics study of childhood infections noted that states often define children differently in their tracking, with some listing everyone under age 14, for example, and others placing the cutoff as high as 20.
This lack of granular information can matter a lot, because one question scientists urgently hope to resolve is the degree to which younger and older children are affected differently by the virus.
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Without a more thorough snapshot of cases around the country, researchers say its hard to know what to make of individual outbreaks. In northern Alabama, local media reported four coronavirus cases in Morgan Countys school system last week, prompting 25 students and staff members to be quarantined.
A spokeswoman for Morgan County Schools said she could not provide further details about where the cases occurred, or whether it was students or teachers who were infected. Both the county and state health departments declined to release further information.
The Alabama Department of Public Health and its local county health departments do not disclose information related to notifiable disease investigations as a matter of policy and privacy, Dr. Karen Landers, assistant state health officer for the Alabama department of health, said in an email.
By comparison, Georgias Cherokee County is providing regular updates on the number of staff members and students who have tested positive and the name of their school, as well as the number in quarantine because of potential exposure. The countys schools have 120 active coronavirus cases among students and staff, according to the latest report released Friday, and more than 1,100 have been quarantined since the countys schools reopened on Aug. 3.
But the school district stressed that such reporting was voluntary. Its worth noting that this level of public reporting is not required in any way, but is keeping with our longstanding commitment to transparency, Barbara Jacoby, a spokeswoman for Cherokee County School District, wrote in an email.
Danny Carlson, director of policy and advocacy at the National Association of Elementary School Principals, said hes heard from principals who want to see national data to get a sense of whether outbreaks like the one in Cherokee County are anomalies.
Its really hard otherwise, because take the Georgia example is that noise? Is it a one-off thing? Is it because of mask requirements? Carlson said. I think people are confused they want to know if this is a trend or not.
Another 27 new coronavirus cases have been reported in Maine, health officials said Monday.
Mondays report brings the total coronavirus cases in Maine to 4,197. Of those, 3,767 have been confirmed positive, while 430 were classified as probable cases, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
New cases were reported in Androscoggin (3), Cumberland (4), Penobscot (13), York (4) counties, Oxford (1), Piscataquis (1), Waldo (1) and Washington (1) state data show.
The agency revised Sundays cumulative total to 4,170, up from 4,168. As the Maine CDC continues to investigate previously reported cases, some are determined to have not been the coronavirus, or coronavirus cases not involving Mainers. Those are removed from the states cumulative total.
No new deaths were reported Monday, leaving the statewide death toll at 127. Nearly all deaths have been in Mainers over age 60.
So far, 399 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Of those, 10 people are currently hospitalized, with three in critical care and one on a ventilator.
Meanwhile, 14 more people have recovered from the coronavirus, bringing total recoveries to 3,638. That means there are 432 active and probable cases in the state, which is up from 417 on Sunday.
A majority of the cases 2,357 have been in Mainers under age 50, while more cases have been reported in women than men, according to the Maine CDC.
As of Monday, there have been 215,426 negative test results out of 221,384 overall. Just over 2.3 percent of all tests have come back positive, Maine CDC data show.
The coronavirus has hit hardest in Cumberland County, where 2,130 cases have been reported and where the bulk of virus deaths 69 have been concentrated. It is one of four counties the others are Androscoggin, Penobscot and York, with 580, 191 and 693 cases, respectively where community transmission has been confirmed, according to the Maine CDC.
There are two criteria for establishing community transmission: at least 10 confirmed cases and that at least 25 percent of those are not connected to either known cases or travel. That second condition has not yet been satisfied in other counties.
Other cases have been reported in Aroostook (33), Franklin (47), Hancock (40), Kennebec (172), Knox (28), Lincoln (35), Oxford (59), Piscataquis (12), Sagadahoc (58), Somerset (40), Waldo (63) and Washington (15) counties.
As of Monday morning, the coronavirus has sickened 5,406,625 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 170,005 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
COLUMBUS, Ohio Ohio in the last week reported fewer new coronavirus cases than during any seven-day period since July 3-9, with the totals to date rising Monday to 109,062 cases, 12,319 hospitalizations and 3,832 deaths.
This means that 1-in-107 Ohioans is now known to have contracted the virus at some point this year.
The seven-day average for newly reported cases in Ohio has dipped to 1,047, from a high of 1,373 on July 18. And the 613 and 775 new coronavirus cases reported by the Ohio Department of Health the last two days were the fewest single-day totals since June 30.
Both the seven-day and 21-day averages for newly reported coronavirus cases have been trending down.Rich Exner, cleveland.com
Separately, data from the Ohio Hospital Association showed the number of patients has continued to trend down, with the average patient count over the last week at 941 the lowest point since July 14.
The patient count ran as high as 1,122 on July 28. But before the July surge in cases, the patient count was as low as 516 on June 15.
This chart shows the number of COVID-19 patients on a given day, as reported by hospitals to the Ohio Hospital Association. Out-of-state patients are included. Totals for the most recent day or two may be revised later.Rich Exner, cleveland.com
There were 316 patients in ICU beds on Monday, though the total is subject to revision once more data is received from reporting hospitals across the state. The ICU patient count was over 500 on several days in April before dipping to near 200 in June.
Over the last week, the number of deaths increased by 159, or 4.3%, from the previous Mondays total of 3,673.
Deaths reported daily were 6, 2, 40, 29, 21, 26 and 35. The reports lag several days from the actual date of death and sometimes are reported by the state in clusters.
While Ohio COVID-19 case and hospitalization numbers increased to record levels over the summer, deaths remained below spring levels.Rich Exner, cleveland.com
Cases were up in the last week by 7,331, or 7.2%. This compares with increases the last five weeks of 7,768, 8,786, 9,009 and 9,315 and 8,897.
Ohio added 62.7 cases per 100,000 people in the last week. This rate exceeded 100 in a nine counties Madison (462.8), Mercer (167.6), Darke (144.8), Preble (134.5), Allen (125.1), Perry (121.8), Shelby (117.3), Sandusky (112.8) and Lawrence (112.7).
Cuyahoga County continues to improve, dropping to 63 new cases per 100,000, or right about the statewide average of 62.7
Gov. Mike DeWine has attributed the increase in cases during the summer to both increased testing and a new spread of the virus.
The state reported that 1,843,274 tests have been conducted to date. This includes 161,003 in the last week, in comparison to 151,694, 191,028 and 161,853 the previous three weeks. During the last week of May, about 60,000 tests were conducted.
Ohio estimates 87,764 people identified with coronavirus have recovered. This is not based on individual case information, but on the number of cases at least three weeks old that have not resulted in death.
The state is now reporting that the onset of symptoms was as early as January for 46 cases. The four earliest cases date to Jan. 2 in Erie, Licking Mahoning and Warren counties.
The 613 and 775 new coronavirus cases reported by the Ohio Department of Health the last two days were the fewest for any day since June 30.Rich Exner, cleveland.com
The age range for cases is from under 1 to 109, with a median age of 42. The median age for deaths is 80.
The cases trended younger during the summer, with the median age for all cases dropping from 50 in mid-May.
For all cases this year, more than three-fourths the deaths have been to people age 70 and up, with 943 (25%) in their 70s and 2,000 (52%) at least 80 years old. Those 80 and up accounted for 44% of deaths from all causes nationally in 2017.
Death totals for other age groups are 541 in their 60s, 237 in their 50s, 66 in their 40s, 30 in their 30s, 13 in their 20s, and two under 20.
But for hospitalizations, the cases are more spread out: 2,242 age 80 or above, 2,394 in their 70s, 2,620 their 60s, 2,150 in their 50s, 1,197 in their 40s, 855 in their 30s, 618 in their 20s and 238 younger.
This graphic illustrates the age breakdown for the Ohio coronavirus cases that have resulted in hospitalizations or deaths.Rich Exner, cleveland.com
The counties with the most deaths are Franklin (537), Cuyahoga (528), Lucas (329), Hamilton (270), Mahoning (260) and Summit (228).
For the deaths in which race was reported, 78% are white, and 19% are black. Yet for total cases, 59% are white and 27% black. Ohios population is 82% white and 13% black, census estimates say.
Among all cases reported to date, 12,319 have been hospitalized, including 2,786 in intensive care units. A week earlier, these totals were 11,629 and 2,680, meaning that in the last week the state learned of 690 new hospitalizations, with 106 new admissions to ICUs.
The counties with the most cases are Franklin (19,683), Cuyahoga (14,418) and Hamilton (10,184). They are the states three largest counties. Cases per capita are shown in the chart at the bottom of this story.
Ohio's first three coronavirus cases were confirmed on March 9, increasing to more than 100,000 this month.Rich Exner, cleveland.com
The first three cases were confirmed on March 9. The total topped 100 on March 19, 1,000 on March 27, 10,000 on April 18, 50,000 on June 28 and 100,000 on Aug. 9.
The state on April 10 began new reporting standards to include more types of testing and cases identified from non-testing evidence. This has resulted in 5,742 probable cases being included in the total cases reported for Ohio to date.
Corrections in the data are made from day to day by the state. Sometimes the state has reduced the number of cases in individual counties from one day to the next as corrected residency information is received.
The chart below is based on the most recent case data from the Ohio Department of Health. Cleveland.com calculated the cases per 100,000 rates based on 2019 census population estimates.
Rich Exner, data analysis editor for cleveland.com, writes about numbers on a variety of topics. Follow on Twitter @RichExner. See other data-related stories at cleveland.com/datacentral.
Some mobile users may need to use this link to see the county-by-county table above.
Read related coverage
See coronavirus cases by day for each Ohio county, including per capita and cases in last seven days
Michigans once huge lead over Ohio for coronavirus cases is no more
Why Ohio widened criteria for counting coronavirus cases, what other states are doing, and the difference in numbers
President George W. Bush delivered words of comfort and encouragement at the packed National Cathedral in Washington, where four former US presidents as well as political and religious leaders gathered on a gray cloudy morning that gave way to bright sunshine.
"Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time," Bush said. "But goodness, remembrance and love have no end. The Lord of life holds all who die, and all who mourn."
For days mourners poured into houses of worship. Church bells tolled. The dead were remembered at candlelight vigils across the country.
Nearly two decades later, in the midst of another national tragedy that has the US surpassing 170,000 deaths from Covid-19, there have been few signs of collective mourning among Americans.
Hospitals and nursing homes shut its doors and placed Covid-19 patients in isolation. Priests administered last rites over the phone. Helpless families said farewells the same way. Funerals were canceled, postponed or held online. Mass gatherings were prohibited.
"Without a way to gather with others to mark a loss, to acknowledge the loss, we are left with an intensified sense of isolation and also, often, a heightened sense of self reproach, anxiety, and what used to be called melancholy," says Judith Butler, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of "Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence."
"Gathering gives people a way to acknowledge the loss, to test the reality of the loss with others, to bring back the memory of the person in the context of the living, and to affirm the possibility of living on. But to deal with loss in utter isolation, or to have loss sanitized through curves and graphs, leaves us without the means we need to affirm life in the wake of loss."
'An enormous sadness'
"The marshaling of the war metaphor ... is consistent in an attempt to rally the American people to unify but to unify around very specific things," said Micki McElya, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut and author of "The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery."
"And that has been largely not marking death, marking tragedy or marking the horror of the ongoing lack of a meaningful response or any attempt to remedy the mistakes of earlier aspects of the response, but to really focus on, 'This is what Americans do." And to kind of appeal to patriotism and nationalism, frankly, in order to encourage people to rally and feel united in shopping and in the economy, in the things that the administration is choosing to push forward."
Still, focusing solely on Washington's response to the pandemic would be letting the American public broadly off the hook, McElya said.
"We need to really consider this and talk about this as a collective national failure," she said. "One certainly encouraged by our leadership. But people have to submit or commit to that narrative, and so many have, and that's an enormous sadness."
Protests as a public act of mourning
"Our tendency to honor the deceased is also related to who is lost," he said.
"And when those figures who die are celebrities, when they are young people, children and so on, when they are heroic figures -- think of the death of the first responders from collapsed World Trade Center in New York -- it's easy to valorize, to validate and collectively mourn such losses."
That the deaths of members of disenfranchised and marginalized communities do not generate the same "upwelling of compassion and concern" as that of a child or first responder "requires us to seriously scrutinize our values," Neimeyer said.
Butler said the victims of the pandemic have come to be recognized in the ongoing national protests over the deaths of George Floyd and other African Americans.
"I think Black Lives Matter is in some ways about mourning," she said. "They were mourning those lives, standing for the value of those lives, publicly gathering in sorrow and in rage... I think that is a public act of mourning at the same time that it is a public act of protest."
The pandemic is 'a rolling thunder'
Americans have also navigated profoundly unsettling times in recent months -- the loss of jobs and everyday routines, social isolation and the disappearance of support networks.
"At some level, we are grieving much that we cannot even easily name, and for which there are no rituals of support," Neimeyer said. "There's no High Mass offered for your loss of security, or there's no ritual by which we bury or inter a career or a job that we lost."
The trauma is compounded by the fact that no end to the pandemic appears in sight.
"It's not that we have suffered these losses and are now trying to take stock of them," Neimeyer said. "We continue to suffer them. It's a rolling thunder. It's not a storm that has passed through. We're in the thick of it."
Butler said the statistical curves and graphs counting the dead inform people about "what is an acceptable level of illness and death in order to reopen the economy."
"We are thus asked to accept that death is necessary, to agree to 'an acceptable level of death' and business and universities that reopen in the midst of a surge are also reckoning on how much death is acceptable," she said.
"It leads us to accept deaths that are preventable ... and it makes us cold, if not cruel, in the face of calculated levels of acceptable death. So, in my mind, it is the absence of collective mourning, forms of gathering, and acknowledgment in conjunction with this calculation of acceptable death that leaves us without a sense of the value of life."
The state of play for K-12
In a typical year, nearly two-thirds of the nations 50 million public schoolchildren have returned to their classrooms by the third week of August. But this year is anything but typical, with many of the nations largest districts delaying the start of school or choosing to open remotely as coronavirus cases surge through their communities.
One thing has become painfully clear: Individual districts have been largely left to chart their own paths, whether its a return to the classroom, remote learning or a mix of the two.
In the map above, our colleagues in Times Opinion looked at which U.S. counties might be able to safely open K-12 schools by examining where the virus is, and isnt, under control. According to their analysis, areas in red should not reopen, those in orange and yellow can partially reopen, and those in green are ready to reopen with conditions, like avoiding high-risk activities, wearing masks and physical distancing. You can search for your areas status here.
Some of those districts in red, however, have already reopened their doors to teachers and students. Schools across the South and Midwest are back in session, with some reporting outbreaks of Covid-19 that have forced them to temporarily move online or to quarantine large numbers of students and teachers.
But be careful about jumping to far-reaching conclusions: Many school outbreaks have taken place in viral hot spots like Georgia, in districts where class sizes have not been significantly reduced and mask wearing is optional, making it difficult to compare to regions like the Northeast, where the infection rate is currently lower and more stringent mask-wearing and social-distancing requirements will be in place for schools that reopen.
The single most important thing is that there is no national reopening strategy, Eliza Shapiro, who covers New York City education for The Times, told us. We have an incredibly regional, fractured, scattershot approach to reopening that has no cohesion. Places like Florida and New York are different countries right now, in terms of the virus.
Some politicians have tried to impose a more unified approach, with decidedly mixed results.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to withhold up to $200 million in funding from the Hillsborough County School District, which covers Tampa and is one of the nations largest, if it did not reopen for in-person learning.
In Chicago, which had planned to open with a hybrid model, schools will now open remotely after opposition from parents and teachers. But many students have returned to in-person learning centers, which have been linked to few, if any, cases. Across the city, cases are low, and the infection rate remains relatively flat.
In New Jersey, Gov. Philip Murphy reversed his requirement for some form of in-person teaching following sustained opposition from the states teachers union.
At the federal level, President Trump tweeted a demand in July: SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!! But as Eliza has reported, his push seems to have backfired, hardening the view among some teachers and school officials that reopening would be unsafe.
These political and policy decisions are taking place as we are slowly learning more about the coronavirus and how it affects children.
Its kind of all over the place, but the only thing that people are really clear about is that most kids dont get very sick, Apoorva Mandavilli, a science reporter for The Times, told us. Even though we think of kids as germ factories, they themselves are not the ones who are going to take the biggest hit.
The bottom line: The problems with schooling during the coronavirus are systemic, but the angst is personal. Teachers and families are being forced to choose between imperfect options based on factors including health, socioeconomic status and tolerance for risk.
Whats next? Claire Cain Miller wrote for The Upshot about how families are navigating an impossible dilemma.
The one way to help parents most is to get the virus under control, Claire told us. The countries that have done that have been able to open schools. There could be things like sending a check to parents to use on tutors or day care or whatever is needed, but Congress hasnt shown much of an appetite for that. So it really just leaves parents on their own.
A rebellion against the high cost of a bachelors degree, already brewing before the coronavirus, has gathered fresh momentum. Some students and parents are rejecting paying face-to-face prices for education that is increasingly online.
Some are demanding tuition rebates, increased financial aid, reduced fees and leaves of absences, our colleague Shawn Hubler reports.
At Ithaca College (student population: 5,500) the financial services team reports more than 2,000 queries in the past month about financial aid and tuition adjustments.
Updated Aug. 17, 2020
The latest on how schools are navigating an uncertain season.
Some 340 Harvard freshmen roughly a fifth of the first-year class deferred admission rather than possibly spending part of the year online. A parent lobbying group, formed on Facebook last month, has asked the administration to reduce tuition and relax rules for leaves of absence.
And its not just about paying the usual. Faced with extra expenses for screening and testing students for the virus, and for reconfiguring campus facilities for safety, some colleges and universities are asking students to pay additional coronavirus fees.
Other higher ed news:
A school district outside Phoenix canceled plans to reopen schools after teachers staged a sick out in protest. Teachers are also planning to strike in Detroit to protest safety concerns.
The Cherokee County School District in Georgia said Sunday that it would close a third high school because of an outbreak of the virus after 25 students tested positive, NBC reports.
Parents are pulling students out of the public school system in favor of home-schooling or pandemic pods. One advocacy group in Texas is fighting the trend with a simple message: A strong Texas recovery requires strong Texas schools.
Many first-year college students will start school from home, without all-night dorm room talks, the rush of a snappy seminar discussion or the sweaty euphoria of a first football game.
As a family, you can help ease their disappointment. Here are some suggestions for how to help build independence for students who are starting college from their childhood bedrooms.
When students return to school, however they return to school, every one should have some kind of student newspaper, Lara Bergen, an educator, wrote in an opinion piece for The 74 Million.
We agree. Student journalists, wed love to hear from you about how youre planning your first few weeks of coverage. What are the obstacles? What has surprised you? We may feature some responses in the coming days.
Meanwhile, as schools across Pennsylvania continue weighing options for in-person instruction, child-care centers are facing costs of $209 million due to shutdowns and regulations put in place due to the coronavirus, according to the state Department of Human Services. That figure includes rent or mortgage payments made while the businesses were closed, payroll to rehire workers, and the expense of sanitizing centers. DHS Secretary Teresa Miller said Monday that the federal CARES Act relief bill has provided much-needed financial relief, but additional funding is required.
Five-year-old West Hollywood bar Flaming Saddles has closed as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The country and western-themed gay bar is just the latest COVID-19 related business casualty around greater Los Angeles, but certainly wont be the last.
Owners Jacqui Squatriglia and Chris Barnes announced the closure over the weekend on social media, saying that they could not come to an agreement with their landlord to allow them to remain in the space. As we were drawing close to opening Flaming Saddles after months of being closed during the lockdowns, the statement reads, it was revealed to us that we did not have a secure deal with the landlord, despite believing otherwise. Renegotiation efforts failed, and thus Flaming Saddles is no more, though a New York City location remains.
The full closure statement is below:
Landlords and lease negotiations have been an ongoing hurdle for many small businesses struggling to reopen (or remain open) during the current COVID-19 crisis. Some larger corporations, like the Cheesecake Factory, have publicly acknowledged that they will not pay their due rent for all or portions of the ongoing pandemic, while smaller independent operators with fewer legal resources and less cash flow have relied on individual negotiations with building owners as a way of staying afloat. Sometimes, restaurant owners say, even with well-intended landlords, staying open is simply just not possible.
Like every other municipality in greater Los Angeles, the city of West Hollywood has struggled to keep many of its legacy bars and restaurants alive during such an uncertain moment. The city recently lost the influential Pride Festival too, meaning a further loss of revenue for restaurants and bars in the years to come. In a traditional year, tax revenues for the Pride festival are north of $2 million, with hundreds of jobs created within the city.
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A Lutheran pastor speaks with parishioners before the start of online worship services conducted from the basement of her home. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
One-third of U.S. adults have watched religious services online or on television in the past month, and a little over half of them or 18% of all adults say they began doing this for the first time during the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, if youre worshipping remotely, you cant hug the other members of your congregation or shake hands with your minister, priest, rabbi or imam. But you can wear whatever clothes you want, turn up (or down) the volume, forget about traffic in the parking lot, and easily check out that service youve heard about in a congregation across town or even across the country.
Whatever the reasons, lots of people like virtual worship. Nine out of 10 Americans who have watched services online or on TV in the past month say they are either very satisfied (54%) or somewhat satisfied (37%) with the experience; just 8% say they are not too or not at all satisfied, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey conducted in mid-July.
So what does this bode for the future? By the time the COVID-19 pandemic has finally run its course, will Americans have lost the habit of going in person to a church, synagogue, temple or mosque? Some commentators have suggested that just as the pandemic has accelerated the trend toward shopping online and made Americans reliant on the internet for work, school, health and entertainment, so might many, if not all, varieties of religious experience move online in the 21st century.
But thats not what the people whove been worshipping online see in their future. On the contrary, most U.S. adults overall say that when the pandemic is over, they expect to go back to attending religious services in person as often as they did before the coronavirus outbreak.
Pew Research Center conducted this survey to help understand how the coronavirus outbreak has impacted the worship habits of Americans. For this report, we surveyed 10,211 U.S. adults from July 13 to 19, 2020. All respondents to the survey are part of Pew Research Centers American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. For more, see theATPs methodologyand themethodology for this report.
The questions used in this analysis can be foundhere.
To be sure, a substantial share of Americans (43%) say they didnt attend religious services in person before the pandemic struck and they dont plan to start going to a church or other house of worship when its all over. But 42% of U.S. adults say they plan to resume going to religious services about as often as they did before the outbreak, while 10% say they will go more often than they used to, and just 5% anticipate going less often.
Similarly, a lot of Americans are not interested in virtual services: Two-thirds of U.S. adults say they have not watched religious services online or on TV in the past month. But of the one-third of U.S. adults who recently watched services online or on TV, relatively few (19% of this group, or 6% of all adults) say that once the pandemic is over, they intend to watch religious services more often than they did before it started.
Most online worshippers say that after COVID-19 has passed, they plan to revert to their pre-pandemic habits (18% of all adults) or watch online less often than they did before the outbreak (9%).
The forecast is even more striking if one looks just at regular attenders from pre-COVID times the respondents who told us in a 2019 survey that they went to services at least once or twice a month. Of those congregational stalwarts, 92% expect that when the pandemic is fully behind us, they will attend physical services at least as often as they did in the past. This includes 10% who say they will also watch online or on TV more than in the past.
Of course, it is impossible to predict how behavior will actually change after the pandemic, particularly if it extends further into the future than people expect. But, at the moment at least, very few U.S. adults anticipate substituting virtual participation for physical attendance at their church or other house of worship: Just 2% of the pre-pandemic regular attenders think that in the long run they will watch services online or on TV more often and attend in person less often than they used to.
Note: Here are the questions used in this analysis, along with responses, and itsmethodology.
FORT MYERS
As of 2 p.m. Monday, there have been 576,094 positive cases of the coronavirus recorded in the state. The case count includes 570,024 Florida residents and 6,070 non-Florida residents. There are 9,539 Florida resident deaths reported, 135 non-resident deaths and 34,194 hospitalizations, according to the Florida Department of Health.
*Numbers are released by the DOH daily at approximately 11 a.m. but are occasionally delayed.
TESTING NUMBERS
Total tested (residents): 4,240,770Total tested (non-residents): 18,803Total positive (residents): 570,024Total positive (non-residents): 6,070Total negative (residents): 3,664,071Total negative (non-residents): 12,771Percent positive (residents): 13.46%Percent positive (non-residents): 32.32%
The remainder of the tests is still pending or inconclusive, according to the FDOH website.
STATEWIDE NUMBERS
Total number of recorded cases: 576,094 (up from 573,416)Florida resident deaths: 9,539 (up from 9,452)Non-resident deaths: 135 (unchanged)
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA NUMBERS
Total recorded cases in SWFL: 34,485 (up from 34,390)Deaths: 692 (up from 689)
Lee County: 17,451 (up from 17,401) 375 deathsCollier County: 10,918 (up from 10,891) 154 deathsCharlotte County: 2,388 (up from 2,378) 101 deathsDeSoto County: 1,422 (up from 1,420) 20 deathsGlades County: 422 (up from 421) 3 deathsHendry County: 1,884 (up from 1,879) 39 deaths
Click HERE for a SWFL case-by-case breakdown updated daily.
NOW HIRING: SWFL companies adding jobs
#GulfshoreStrong: Covering people making a difference in SWFL
FOOD PANTRIES: Harry Chapin mobile food pantry schedule, week of Aug. 17
REPORT COVID-19 DIAGNOSIS/TEST: International self-reporting system
The Florida Department of Health has opened a 24-hour COVID-19 Call Center at 1-866-779-6121. Questions may also be emailed to [emailprotected]. Email responses will be sent during call center hours.
LINK: Florida Department of Health COVID-19 updates
*The map is best viewed on a desktop computer. If you dont see the map above tap HERE for a fullscreen version.
