The Cobb County School District announced Tuesday that the last two days of classes in the fall semester, this Thursday and Friday, will be online only due to rising COVID-19 cases. 
The district said in a release that the decision was “based on guidance by Cobb and Douglas Public Health.” Here’s more from the district:
“The number of positive COVID-19 cases in our community continues to rise and we are taking every possible step, including using remote learning days, to keep community spread from becoming school spread.
“This was not an easy decision and we understand that this may be a difficulty for some of our families. Working collaboratively with Cobb & Douglas Public Health, this decision is intended to benefit our students, staff, and could help our entire community be safer and healthier over the holiday break.
“These two additional remote learning days will also give District and public health staff the time they need to effectively and efficiently contact trace existing cases.”
Another 351 COVID-19 cases were reported in Cobb on Monday, following last week’s single-day record of 404. The previous record of 363 was set only on Dec. 4, and these figures are similar to numbers recorded during a summer surge of reported cases in the county.
In another key metric, the 14-day average of cases per 100,000 people in Cobb continues to skyrocket. It was 521 on Monday, and has been sharply rising over the last month.
That’s much higher than the “high community spread” category of 100 cases per 100,000.
Last week Dr. Janet Memark, the director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, issued letters to school parents urging them to limit activities during the holidays, noting that cases in the school district are coming from outside of a school environment.
Cobb schools provides updated COVID-related information at its Learning Everywhere page.
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