Data

When schools fully reopened, the Delta variant drove many worries: Would crowded classrooms run up infection rates? Would outbreaks keep many schools closed? Could there be a normal academic year — the first since the pandemic began?

The news so far has been reassuring: A vast majority of the nation’s 50 million public school students have been in classrooms, full-time and mostly uninterrupted, this fall — whether students are masked or unmasked, teachers vaccinated or not. In fact, infection rates declined 35 percent nationally through the month of September, as many schools opened their doors.

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Chart: The Covid-19 booster shot boom An average of nearly 400,000 people per day have received booster shots in the previous seven days, double from the week before. NBC News

An NBC News analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that the number of people receiving booster shots is outpacing those getting their first or second doses of the initial vaccination, and is contributing to a modest increase in Covid vaccinations in October.