The district south of Louisville said COVID-19 causing staffing issues is the reason for another move to nontraditional instruction.      

The district south of Louisville did not immediately confirm whether COVID-19 is the reason for another move to nontraditional instruction.      

The unprecedented surge has caused widespread staffing shortages and left more than 145,000 Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 as of Tuesday, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, which is more than at any point since the beginning of the pandemic.Amid the disruption, which has impacted the return of classes following the holiday break, those who work in education services have hotly debated whether in-person learning is currently feasible. Health experts are also urging more vaccination, with only 17% of children ages 5-11 and 54% of ages 12-17 immunized so far, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday that children are being infected at a much higher rate than in 2020."Of the children who have been hospitalized or go to the intensive care unit or die, about a third of them have no comorbidities. Therefore, it can occur in anyone," Offit said."This is not a virus to fool around with. This is not influenza or parainfluenza or other typical respiratory viruses. This virus can cause you to make an immune response to your own blood vessels, which means that you can have heart disease, brain disease, kidney disease, lung disease as well as liver disease," he said.Other health experts say in-person learning should move forward, citing the eligibility of K-12 students for vaccines and that adult teachers and staff have had plenty of time to get inoculated and boosted. Joseph Allen, the director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told CNN's Erin Burnett on Tuesday that data shows that the risk to children is very low, and it's now time to talk about easing measures such as mandatory masking."New data out of New York state during the peak of the Omicron surge shows that child hospitalization rates are on the order of one in 100,000 if you are unvaccinated. If you are vaccinated, a child's risk is on the order of two to three per million," Allen said. "We are coming up on two years of disrupted school, kids in masks, to think there is no harm there or no loss in socialization, no impact, I think is incorrect," he said. "The risk to kids is low and adults have had time to protect themselves with the vaccine."As some schools return to class, others head homeAs the debate continues over how schools can better mitigate the Omicron spread, some educators are taking matters into their own hands. A group of teachers in Louisiana are planning a "sick-out" Wednesday to protest Covid-19 protocols and severe staff shortages, demanding virtual learning return in their district and for school officials to extend isolation times for those infected from 5 days to 10 days."We are asking that our teachers take off tomorrow and stand in solidarity showing that we care about our students, and we're not going to allow them to be put in jeopardy," said Valencea Johnson, president of the East Baton Rouge Parish branch of the Louisiana Association of Educators."Entire departments are out, buses and classrooms are being combined, ancillary staff, teachers, office staff, and other school employees are covering classes to keep the school afloat," she said. "We cannot continue to do this. Our staff is experiencing burnout and our students are not getting the education they need and deserve."CNN has reached out to the superintendent of the district for response.Several of the nation's largest school districts are returning to in-person learning while others are shifting to remote.Districts in Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta moved forward with returns to classrooms this week. Students at Chicago Public Schools will arrive to class Wednesday after a battle between the school system and the teachers' union canceled classes for days.Other districts, such as Cincinnati, Santa Fe and Las Vegas -- where the Clark County school district is the fourth largest in the country -- are temporarily moving back to remote learning as they deal with teacher absences.'Get the highest-quality mask that you can tolerate' Americans concerned about the best way to protect themselves and their loved ones should "get the highest-quality mask that you can tolerate and that's available to you," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday."If you can tolerate an N95, do it. If you want to get a KN95, fine. And what the CDC has said -- and it gets misinterpreted -- but they're saying, wearing any mask is better than no mask at all," Fauci said. "But there is a gradation of capability of preventing you from getting infected and from you transmitting it to someone else. So we should be wearing the best possible masks that we can get. That's a fact."The CDC is set to update its mask website this week to best reflect the options available to people and the different levels of protection they provide, a CDC official told CNN on Tuesday. Many experts say cloth masks don't provide enough protection, but current CDC guidance, last updated in October, still recommends three-ply cloth face coverings.In Chicago, the department of public health announced the distribution of 1.9 million KN95 masks this week.More than 100 community-based organizations including churches and libraries are helping to distribute the masks, an upgrade from many of the cloth masks being used, said the Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health Dr. Allison Arwady."We know a lot of people, frankly even a 50 cents or $1 mask is just one extra cost at a time that is difficult," Arwady said.CNN's John Bonifield, Katherine Dillinger, Ben Tinker, Amy Simonson, Jenn Selva, Elizabeth Stuart, David Shortell and Paul P. Murphy contributed to this report.

Nearly a year after he had taken office, the stubborn problem he had vowed to solve persisted, exposing a testing system that was failing once again to meet demand -- and Biden's own promises.Anger over testing shortages has been mounting across the country -- including inside the White House -- since early December, when the Omicron variant began spreading widely across the country and the demand for tests began far outstripping the supply in many areas. According to people involved in the conversations, Biden himself has privately told top staff members in strong terms that he regrets that he and his team did not anticipate the shortfalls earlier, something he's also made clear in public.Despite those regrets, experts had been warning for months that testing capacity wasn't where it should be as the holiday season approached, including during a virtual meeting with White House officials in October. Multiple experts argue that Biden and his team did not move quickly enough to address the coming shortfalls, and by then it was too late to dramatically increase supplies to levels that would have eased the current shortages. "Everybody saw it coming. We knew we needed more tests," Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said on CNN last month. "I think the administration had dropped the ball on this."While Biden entered office with a plan to expand testing -- pouring in billions of dollars to boost manufacturing and ramp up testing in schools -- his top priority was vaccines, which kept most people out of the hospital and even slashed the chances of getting infected with and spreading the virus.But vaccine hesitancy remains stubbornly high, and a new, highly transmissible variant that sidesteps much of the vaccines' protection against infection has spread across the country, driving case counts to their highest levels to date. By December, it was evident Biden was falling short of the promise he had made as a candidate that "anyone who wants a test should be able to get one, period."That has prompted a hurried effort inside the White House to stand up a new test distribution program that officials say will provide free at-home rapid tests to any American who orders them online. Federal testing sites have opened in cities across the country and a new requirement for health insurance companies to reimburse for the cost of tests takes effect this week.The White House says a slew of investments it made in the fall -- including through the Defense Production Act -- and efforts to speed up the authorization of new rapid tests have helped to dramatically increase the number of at-home tests. The monthly supply of at-home tests has risen from 25 million to 28 million in August to 46 million in October to 300 million today. The White House projects that next month the monthly supply will hit 350 million to 400 million, according to a White House memo obtained by CNN. Still, many experts say that even those ramped-up numbers are not enough."We're not going to stop there. Those numbers will keep going up in the months ahead," Dr. Tom Inglesby, the White House's newly installed testing coordinator, said in an interview this week.As the country shifts into a new phase of the pandemic focused less on eradicating Covid and more on learning to live with it, there is a renewed emphasis on the availability of testing to assure people they're safe to travel and engage in other normal activities.It's a pivotal moment for the Biden White House. Aides to the President know he and his party will be judged by how well they navigate a return to "normal." Pivoting quickly to improve testing supplies is a test of Biden's ability to shift the country into a new stage of a virus he's acknowledged is unlikely to completely disappear."What we've been hampered by is thinking that the role of testing is sort of secondary and optional, where really the role of testing is foundational throughout the course of the pandemic and throughout the exit from the pandemic," said Dr. Thomas Tsai, assistant professor of health policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Because the testing is the information, is the early warning system, on whether cases are rising or decreasing. It's the information that informs behavior.""We've always been chasing our tails within testing strategy," Tsai added. "It's never sort of coincided where we've had the demand and supply of tests ... before the waves peak, so we can actually alter the course of the pandemic. It's always documented the course of pandemic, as opposed to altering the course."An October warningTwo months before Christmas, medical experts foresaw a frantic last-minute shopping surge, with millions of Americans flooding stores in search of at-home Covid testing kits to tell them their holiday gatherings were safe. A group of doctors shared that vision with the White House at a meeting on October 22, urging officials to expand the nation's testing capacity in a hurry. The participants say they got what they wanted: "Massive efforts" to expand production and distribution of tests, as one of those physicians described it to CNN.Yet it turned out the warning and the effort came too late. By that point, the doctors' vision of 732 million tests per month by March 2022 was simply impossible to pull off. Demand for the tests had tumbled so low during the summer that manufacturers had dramatically reduced production. And at that point, only a handful of at-home tests were available for purchase. "I think the bold initiative, had it come to fruition, would have been amazing," said Dr. Michael Mina, a physician who was part of that October briefing with the Biden administration. "But it would have been very, very difficult in the last two months."Inglesby, who joined the White House this month as the Covid-19 Response Team testing coordinator, said the goals presented in the meeting were "ambitious" but impossible to reach in October because of the limited number of authorized over-the-counter tests."We all wish it could have been sooner if it were feasible. Everyone would have liked it to be earlier," he said in an interview this week.Inglesby noted that the testing shortage is not unique to the US: "If you look at newspapers all over the world, every country is having challenges meeting demand."Administration officials have been working behind the scenes for weeks in a hurried effort to stand up the free test program, including working with test manufacturers to solicit proposals and with website programmers to develop the portal where Americans will be able to request the tests.Contracts between private companies and the federal government to procure the 500 million tests began being awarded on Friday, and more information about the website is expected in the coming days. The White House said it expected the first free rapid tests to be delivered to the government "early next week."White House officials insist the steps Biden took over the past months have made it possible to order the 500 million tests at all, including purchasing $3 billion in rapid tests during the late summer and early fall to bolster the market and spending another $1 billion to secure key supplies for test-makers using the Defense Production Act. They say those steps increased capacity when demand was low. But they have acknowledged it wasn't enough to avert the Omicron-induced shortage."We do not have the tests that we need to meet all the demand," Inglesby said of the current state of play, echoing a blunt acknowledgment from the President. "Creating a system that can scale 50 to 60 times is challenging. We are working to meet that challenge, but it's just really important to understand that this virus that we are working against now -- this strain of virus -- is moving and has accelerated in a way that was very different even from Delta and certainly from the world before Delta," Inglesby said. "We have all the levers pulled." Too late to help?Testing companies are poised to make the most of the moment. Manufacturers whose tests have been authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration -- including Abbott, ACON and iHealth -- had been increasing their capacity already and there have been significant changes in capacity for the start of 2022. "It has taken a year and a half for the US to embrace the important role of rapid testing," said a spokesperson for Abbott, who said the company was producing 70 million of its BinaxNOW products in January and prepared to "scale significantly further" in the coming months."It is important for the US to maintain the testing manufacturing capacity and supply during periods of low demand so we can respond to future variants and surges. We're on the right path now, but we can't be complacent or think that testing won't play a critical role in our ability to gather safely later on."Yet even if tests begin reaching Americans by the end of January, that would be more than a month after the latest wave began hitting communities and the testing shortfalls became apparent.Some in Congress have sharpened their criticism of the administration's testing approach in recent weeks. In a letter last week addressed to US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, two senior Republicans on key health committees demanded answers on the Biden administration's "lack of strategy" for Covid-19 testing. "With over $82.6 billion specifically appropriated for testing, and flexibility within the Department to allocate additional funds from COVID-19 supplemental bills or annual appropriations if necessary, it is unclear to us why we are facing such dire circumstances now," wrote Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Richard Burr of North Carolina.On Monday, a group of 50 lawmakers who included some high-profile Biden allies — such as Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, along with independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- wrote a letter to the President urging "additional, immediate steps" to ramp up testing supply so that every American has access to one rapid test a week.Officials say the scarcity of at-home tests this month was driven by a steep uptick in demand, particularly in major cities where cases began surging at the same moment Americans were entering the holiday stretch. Increased travel and family get-togethers prompted fresh interest in getting tested, which depleted stocks of at-home tests at drugstores and online.The plan Biden announced in December to procure and distribute hundreds of millions of at-home rapid tests developed quickly over a stretch of days that month as reports emerged of empty shelves and sold-out notices, according to officials familiar with the matter.Still, when Biden made that announcement, several details of the plan remained unresolved. Administration officials were unable to provide any specific details about when the website to request the tests would launch or how quickly tests would be shipped, pointing only to a broad timeline of early January. They also did not detail a plan to get tests to those with limited internet access.A problem Biden promised to solve, but hasn'tA buildup of factors over the past two years led to a shortfall in testing that became apparent only as the Omicron variant began spreading across the country in the weeks after Thanksgiving, according to administration officials and others familiar with the matter.Since the beginning of the pandemic, testing has been an issue in the US pandemic response, many public health experts say.The first tests developed in the United States by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in early 2020 were faulty, keeping many local officials in the dark about the sizes of their outbreaks. Correcting these tests took nearly a month, leaving the country in a blind spot about how to contain the growing pandemic. There also were questions over who should be tested -- only those who had symptoms, or close contacts of people with confirmed infections as well.Biden entered office vowing to remedy the testing issues that had plagued the previous administration, and he signed an executive order on his first day in office meant to expand the availability of testing, including in schools and other "priority populations."He established a Pandemic Testing Board -- a campaign promise modeled on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's War Production Board -- early in his term. And in February he announced a series of investments meant to increase testing capacity by scaling up the production of raw materials and establishing regional centers to distribute test kits and collect samples.But Biden's central focus in the early days of his term ultimately was on getting as many Americans vaccinated as possible, a campaign that diverted public attention from the testing initiative he'd entered office vowing to execute."Right from the start, the CDC, for lack of a better word, screwed up testing. They got the testing kits wrong; they sent out the wrong kits. Then we finally built up an infrastructure, but it came simultaneously with the vaccine, and we thought the vaccine would solve the problem and we didn't need to maintain that infrastructure," said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician at the University of Pennsylvania who served on Biden's Covid advisory team during the transition.The White House rejects the notion that it prioritized vaccination at the expense of testing."That is not true at all," Inglesby said. "It was never zero sum between the two." Still, without adequate testing, public health officials and hospitals aren't in the best position to anticipate how many cases may be coming their way or how much treatment may be needed.Testing is taking on an additional importance with the introduction of antivirals such as the recently authorized product from Pfizer, Paxlovid, which can reduce hospitalization by nearly 90% in high-risk adults. For that medication to work properly, the pills need to be taken within the first five days of symptoms occurring. The only way to know if those symptoms are caused by Covid is through testing. "If you don't have a strategy around testing, you're just kind of shooting in the dark and really addressing issues as they come up," said Lori Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. "And I think we might be feeling the consequences of that right now."CNN's Jen Christensen, Nadia Kounang and Amanda Sealy contributed to this report.

COVID-19 hospitalization numbers at all three of Louisville's major hospitals and many hospitals across the state have risen over the past week.       

In a new company-wide memo, CEO Scott Kirby said the airline is "reducing our near-term schedules to make sure we have the staffing and resources to take care of customers."Kirby did not specify by how much the airline is drawing down flights. But the memo added that "the Omicron surge has put a strain on our operation, resulting in customer disruptions during a busy holiday season." He went on to thank employees for their professionalism in handling the delays. United is hardly alone in dealing with delays and canceled flights. JetBlue Airways recently reduced its schedule by about 1,280 flights, roughly 10% of its schedule, from January 6 through January 13 because a growing number of crew members were falling sick. Airlines have been canceling hundreds of flights every day in the United States since Christmas Eve as they grapple with staff shortages due to Covid-19 infections and bad weather in parts of the country. JetBlue is based in New York City, which has been struggling with record-high numbers of positive cases. "I also know that Omicron has affected the personal well-being of our United team. We have about 3,000 employees who are currently positive for COVID," Kirby said in the memo. On one day at Newark, nearly a third of JetBlue's workforce called out sick, he added. Some 3,000 JetBlue employees currently are positive for Covid, but none of the company's vaccinated employees are hospitalized, according to the memo. The hospitalization rate among United employees has plunged since the company's vaccine mandate went into effect by "100 times lower than the general US population," Kirby said.Previously, more than one United employee per week was dying from Covid. More recently, the company has gone eight straight weeks with no deaths among its vaccinated employees, he added. Jordan Valinsky and Reuters contributed to this story.

More than 141,000 Americans were hospitalized with Covid-19 as of Monday, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, nearing the record of 142,246 hospitalizations on January 14, 2021.The burden is straining health care networks as hospitals juggle staffing issues caused by the increased demand coupled with employees, who are at a higher risk of infection, having to isolate and recover after testing positive. In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam declared a limited state of emergency Monday as the number of ICU hospitalizations more than doubled since December 1. The order allows hospitals to expand bed capacity and give more flexibility in staffing, he said, adding that it also expands the use of telehealth as well as expands which medical professionals can give vaccines.In Texas, at least 2,700 medical staffers are being hired, trained and deployed to assist with the surge, joining more than 1,300 personnel already sent across the state, the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement to CNN.Kentucky has mobilized the National Guard to provide support, with 445 members sent to 30 health care facilities, the state announced. "Omicron continues to burn through the commonwealth, growing at levels we have never seen before. Omicron is significantly more contagious than even the Delta variant," said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, noting the earlier variant that spurred a surge of cases in the summer and fall months. "If it spreads at the rate we are seeing, it is certainly going to fill up our hospitals," he said, and Kentucky is "down to 134 adult ICU beds available." In Kansas, the University of Kansas Health System, which announced a record number of Covid-19 patients, is "shifting staff from areas that can support the supportive functions of direct patient care," UKHS chief operating officer Chris Ruder said. "So that may be running a lab, it may be a simple patient transport. Those types of things we can use other individuals to help with."Mitigation measures such as mandatory masking are also being revived in some areas. Delaware Gov. John Carney signed a universal indoor mask mandate Monday due to the increase in hospitalizations, with some hospitals "over 100% inpatient bed capacity amid crippling staffing shortages," he said in a statement. Churches and places of worship are exempt from the mandate, while businesses should provide masks to customers and have signage about indoor mask requirements."I know we're all exhausted by this pandemic. But at the level of hospitalizations we're seeing, Delawareans who need emergency care might not be able to get it. That's just a fact. It's time for everyone to pitch in and do what works. Wear your mask indoors. Avoid gatherings or expect to get and spread Covid. Get your vaccine and, if eligible, get boosted. That's how we'll get through this surge without endangering more lives," Carney said.Schools face Omicron issues The debate over safety in schools from Covid-19 continues to play out as only about one in six children ages 5 to 11 is fully vaccinated, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.As Los Angeles prepared to return to school on Tuesday, approximately 62,000 students and staff had tested positive for Covid-19 and will have to stay home, data from the Los Angeles Unified School District showed Monday, equating to a 14.99% positivity rate. The positivity rate of Los Angeles County at large, by comparison, has spiked to 22%.In Chicago, educators will return to school Tuesday and students are slated for in-person learning Wednesday following a nearly week-long dispute. The Chicago Teachers Union had voted to teach remotely last week, and the school district responded by canceling classes for four days.The agreement, announced late Monday, included metrics for when a classroom would need to go remote due to Covid-19 levels.In areas where schools have returned to in-person learning after the holiday break, the time needed for those with Covid-19 to recover has impacted some essential services. A Greensboro, North Carolina school district suspended school bus transportation for eight of its high schools beginning Monday due to the "severe bus driver shortage made worse by rising Covid-19 cases," according to a statement from Guilford County Schools. "As of this weekend, we don't have enough bus drivers to continue serving all students, so we had to make some really difficult choices," said GCS chief operations officer Michelle Reed. To offset the strain on parents and guardians, the district has developed a partnership "that will allow high school students to ride city buses for free," according to the GCS statement.Other industries continue to be hitNot only has the strain of the Omicron surge taken its toll on health care workers and educators, but other sectors also are struggling due to the high infection rate.Some municipalities have seen nearly a quarter of their trash collection workforce call in sick in recent weeks due to Covid-19, leading to delays, according to the Solid Waste Association of North America."This coincided, unfortunately, with increased trash and recycling volumes associated with the holidays. However, we hope that as volumes decline and sanitation workers return to work, these delays will prove temporary," executive director and CEO David Biderman said in a statement Monday.In travel, US airlines canceled thousands of additional flights over the weekend due to Covid-19 callouts and winter storms, and cruise line Royal Caribbean International announced it has canceled voyages on four ships because of "ongoing Covid-related circumstances around the world." Last week, Norwegian Cruise Line canceled the voyages of eight ships.Public transit systems in major metropolitan areas such as New York City and Washington, DC, have had to scale back service with employees ill from Covid-19.In Detroit, 20-25% of SMART bus service is canceled or delayed, the agency said in a statement Saturday.And Portland, Oregon's buses are "facing the most significant operator shortfall in agency history" and reduced bus service by 9% beginning Sunday, the agency said. CNN's Rosa Flores, Claudia Dominguez, David Shortell, Pete Muntean, Deidre McPhillips, Melissa Alonso, Hannah Sarisohn, Cheri Mossburg and Jenn Selva contributed to this report.

The city has 372 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 complications and 79 in ICUs.       

The two-week pause will begin on Monday, Jan. 10, but some events may still be held virtually.       

By the end of 2021, all they had left was that store. For most of last year, the family had been adjusting to the changes the Covid-19 pandemic forced on the restaurant: navigating takeout orders instead of in-house diners, shutting down their lunch buffet and relying on federal financial aid to make ends meet. The day Gill Dhanoa went to get her first Covid-19 vaccine -- a Monday, when the restaurant is usually closed -- the familiar plaza where their business is located flashed on the news. Their store sits across the street from a King Soopers, where a mass shooting was unfolding. The gunman killed 10 people -- some shoppers, others employees -- ranging from 20 to 65 years old. In the days after the massacre, Gill Dhanoa's family handed out food to the grieving crowds that cycled through the memorials. Months later, when a vicious blaze charred thousands of acres in a matter of hours, the restaurant offered shelter to the employees who were forced to evacuate. Gill Dhanoa's family homes -- where she lived with her husband and teenage son, where her parents lived with her brother and a third, a rental home -- were swallowed by the flames. "These four walls are home right now," she said, standing inside her restaurant.In the ashes of her home, only a few items remained intact: a stack of buttons, a salt and pepper shaker, some coins, a horseshoe, a towel rack.The Marshall Fire, fueled by powerful winds last Thursday, leaped into suburban neighborhoods across southern Boulder County and ravaged parts of Superior and Louisville, wiping out more than 1,000 homes. The blaze came at the heels of a traumatic year for a place often referred to as the "Boulder Bubble," a nod to the healthy, utopian-like lifestyle many residents take pride in and that some say is removed from surrounding realities. But if anything, locals here say the tragedies they've experienced in the last year reflect growing national crises -- including the global pandemic, a rise in gun violence and climate change -- that no community is immune to, and which some residents say can be curbed or prevented."I wish these things weren't happening. I'm devastated that they do happen. And I think we have had enough experience in our country to know that there are things that we can do to prevent them from happening," said Kellie Brownlee, 29, a graduate instructor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Those things include measures to prevent further gun violence, boosting vaccination numbers to help curb further surges and tuning into climate action to better address recurring natural disasters like wildfires, Brownlee said. "It's heartbreaking when it comes into your community, but it also brings to light the fact that this will affect all of us at some point," she said. Sirens, again and againJust a few blocks from the University of Colorado Boulder, Jeff Gamet said it was often sirens rushing by his home that tipped him off to the tragic events that took place in the community. The freelance writer heard authorities rush by in early March when a party on nearby University Hill escalated to what Boulder police called a "riot," involving hundreds of people violating Covid-19 restrictions. When officers arrived and attempted to break up the crowds, they were hit with bricks and rocks, police said. At least 10 people were arrested. Days later, Gamet heard helicopters and police vehicles speed by again, this time heading to the scene of the shooting at the King Soopers store. A mental health resource center was set up following the shooting for people impacted by the rampage, including victims' families, store employees, first responders and others across the Boulder community. The center continues to offer mental health counseling, comfort dogs, art therapy, walking groups and acupuncture. Gamet visited a memorial for the victims in the days after the shooting -- a brief exception to a year he largely spent in his home, dodging the coronavirus so he wouldn't pass it on to his immunocompromised parents. Looking around at the memorial after the shooting, he said he found vivid reminders of the other crisis. "We're all wearing masks," Gamet said. "So we had that emotionally devastating incident and underlying it, we were still trying to deal with a pandemic."Amid another nationwide case surge and the rapid spread of the virus, Gamet found out last month he had come in contact with a known Covid-19 case in the community. His father tested positive but has since recovered.Boulder County recently recorded a spike in new Covid-19 infections, according to county data. Roughly 83 people were hospitalized with the virus on January 7, up by more than 50% from two weeks earlier, the data shows.Days after a Christmas spent in quarantine, Gamet said he found himself preparing to evacuate, in case the Marshall Fire came close."There's been so much going on," he said. "There were days where I'd be in the middle of my routine and I would just cry."Hoping for a brief respite, he attempted to order his favorite local snack: Boulder Popcorn. But the Heuston family, which ran the popular popcorn business out of their garage, lost their Louisville home in the Marshall Fire."That's the first home we ever bought. We raised our kids in that home," said Chris Heuston, who said her husband started the popcorn business with their daughter. All that's left now of their home of 27 years, she said, "is just ashes in a concrete hole."Without any warning from local officials, the family watched the flames approach last week and had just minutes to grab some belongings, Heuston said. By the time she ran out of her home, which was filled with smoke and soot, she could see the fire in the field behind her home. "I just wish I had 15 more minutes to grab a few more things that meant something," she said. Safely sheltering at a friend's house several miles away, she watched the flames swallow her home on live television, after a news crew set up cameras nearby.'We're constantly in crisis mode'The recent blaze and the rapid spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant have also stretched thin the local school system, which is combating teacher absences, navigating what a safe return to school should look like and helping staff and families who lost everything in the flames, said Randy Barber, chief communications officer for the Boulder Valley School District. "It's been overwhelming," Barber said. "We're constantly in crisis mode."The district reopened its doors after the winter break on Wednesday, Barber said, after getting the buildings in working condition again -- including by purifying the smoke-filled air inside and restoring electricity. District officials, Barber added, have prioritized having students in class throughout the pandemic as a means of family support."It's incredibly important for families that are going through such unthinkable things to have a place for students to be able to go that's safe, that's stable," Barber added. "For there to be some level of normalcy in these families' lives."At least 42 employees lost their homes in the Marshall Fire, Barber said. More than 480 families in the district have reported some kind of impact from the blaze. The district is coordinating to provide necessary resources to students who need them, including laptops, school supplies and counseling support.Much of the fire damage was in and around Louisville and the town of Superior, where some former Boulder residents found refuge after a massive flood in 2013 that wiped out hundreds of homes, said Grace Peng, a scientist who used to live in Boulder County. Those areas were also where many used to look to for more affordable options than what was offered in the city of Boulder, which is now one of the most expensive areas in the nation.But prices in recent years shot up in those areas as well, residents say, and the loss of structures means an even larger affordable housing crisis is on the way because of the housing shortage."There are a lot of people that have no place to live now and they can't afford to get a place here. What are they going to do?" said Gamet, the freelance writer. "Are these people just going to move away and be gone from the community?"A day-by-day recoveryAfter the series of traumatic events, what many in the community may be feeling is a "sense of groundlessness," said Sona Dimidjian, a psychology professor and director of the Renée Crown Wellness Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. "Like the ground has been pulled out from under them," Dimidjian said. "I think it's important for people to know that's part of experiencing a traumatic event like this."For the Gill family, the past year in Boulder County seems to point to a dangerous reality the nation is heading to, said Mandip Gill, Gurjeet's brother."I think this last year, year and a half, has just been trending towards our new normal," he said. "I don't think any of us are equipped to handle what's happening. And I think we've all learned that by the surge of (the) mental health crisis."Grappling with what happened will be a long term process for the community, Dimidjian said, and it's important residents and those impacted know there are mental health services and counselors in the community that can offer guidance and support.For many here, that process has only just begun.Gamet said an unwavering routine and a large support system of friends have helped him cope. Humor and positivity are helping Gill Dhanoa combat the shock since losing her home. And a GoFundMe page has been set up for her family. Heuston's family spent the days after the blaze making family dinners, watching movies and assembling puzzles, hoping to revive a small sense of normalcy. Despite all the things lost, Heuston is thankful they're all still here. "One of the things the pandemic taught us too is how much our health and our families and our lives mean, and it's finding some of that beauty in our world every day," she said. "Because if not, how do you keep going?"