As the second-largest school district in the United States, Los Angeles Unified has announced plans to test about 600,000 students and 75,000 employees for COVID-19 in preparation for the future resumption of in-person instruction, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.

The project will offer school staff, students, and families with a regular COVID-19 test and contact tracing service starting on August 17, Superintendent of Los Angeles Unified Austin Beutner said in a statement.

Beutner said that extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary actions. "While this testing and contact tracing effort is unprecedented, it is necessary and appropriate."

The Los Angeles Unified School District has closed in-person instruction since March, according to the Guardian. In July, the school district announced that it planned to teach online for the new school year as the number of cases soared.

In an op-ed published over the weekend, Beutner said the testing plan would cost the district 300 U.S. dollars more per student. Although Beutner did not include the total cost, it would have come to at least 1.8 million U.S. dollars based on enrollment in the region alone.

Beutner said he hopes the findings from the effort will inform other school districts' efforts to track and control the disease.

According to the Guardian, the latest data shows an exponential surge in COVID-19 cases among children in the United States, with 97,000 cases reported in the last two weeks of July alone.

That number has experts worried that if the school district starts early, it could lead to a further increase in cases. "Putting people together – whether they're children or older adults – is the worst thing you can do in the face of the pandemic," said John Swartzberg, a clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health.

(Cover from CFP)