RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas (KVEO) — With soaring COVID-19 cases in the Valley, school nurses are taking new responsibilities to ensure students and staff are safe.
“We’re requiring our school nurses to meet with all of our students via online and go over safety measures, the symptoms, hand washing, how to report if they have any symptoms,” Sulema Solis, director of health service at PSJA explained.
Meeting with a nurse online is a measure that will be required from all their 33,000 students attending their school district.
“That’s something our nurses have never done before. They do general sessions during the year but it’s never something to this extent where they have to meet with every individual student,” Solis added.
Solis said the students will also take their own temperatures on campus at a regular basis during the school year as an added precaution.
“We’re look specifically at the number of patients we have hospitalized here, the number of beds available. So, we’re taking that into consideration and we’re taking even more measures than what the state is requiring of us,” Solis said.
The school district is also stocking up on personal protection equipment like hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies.
“We will have a COVID-19 team at every campus so that’ll consist of school employees that will be in charge of different items revolving around COVID-19,” Solis said.
Solis also advises parents to keep up with their students’ immunization vaccines.
