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NEW ORLEANS — NOLA Public Schools (NOLA-PS) and LCMC Children’s Hospital of New Orleans (CHNOLA) celebrated another milestone today in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic by announcing the first round of vaccines for school nurses and an increase in COVID-19 testing options for the school community.

Four school nurses received the first shots of the COVID-19 vaccine today at Children’s Hospital in Uptown. NOLA-PS and CHNOLA are in the process of registering the rest of the approximately 80 public school nurses who care for NOLA-PS students to be vaccinated in the coming days.

“This first step to vaccinate our nurses is a hopeful sign that this is truly the beginning of the end of this pandemic,” said NOLA-PS superintendent Dr. Henderson Lewis, Jr. “In the meantime, we are very proud of the partnerships we’ve built to help protect our community of schools as we get through this, together.”

In addition, this week, NOLA-PS, with funding provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF), and a partnership with the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH), plans to launch three mobile testing units that will visit every participating school to provide routine polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. 

As the COVID-19 vaccine distribution continues to roll out, NOLA-PS, The City of New Orleans and CHNOLA ThriveKids will host a virtual town hall to answer questions on Wednesday, Jan. 13. This meeting is to provide vaccine-related information to NOLA-PS educators and school support staff.

To learn more about COVID-19 vaccine distribution for school team members, schools are asked to email thrivekids@lcmchealth.org or call 504.894.5109.

For more information about the COVID-19 vaccine, visit www.lcmchealth.org/coronavirus/.