New York City reports remarkably low COVID-19 positivity rate at open schools: mayor

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday said that testing across the city’s public schools have shown “remarkable” results, highlighting a 0.17 percent positivity rate across all open schools.

After more than 16,000 test results have come back from hundreds of schools, only 28 students and staff have tested positive in the entire school system, he said.

The city has a mandatory testing program which tests once a month in every school. The tests were administered between Oct. 9 through Oct. 16 in 377 schools.

“As we have started that testing program we have just seen remarkable results,” he said. “This is really extraordinary,” the mayor said, adding this really “bodes well for the future of our schools and our ability to fight and overcome this disease.”

The 28 positives included 20 staff members and eight students, out of the results of 16,298 tests randomly collected by the New York City school system in the first week of its COVID-19 testing regimen, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

When officials put mobile testing units at schools near Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods that have had new outbreaks, only four positive cases turned up — out of more than 3,300 tests conducted since the last week of September, said the paper.