260 Georgia school district employees have gone home to quarantine since Wednesday

More than 250 employees in one Georgia school district are currently not working due to positive coronavirus tests or exposure to those infected.

CNN reported Monday that about 260 employees with the Gwinnett County School District, Georgia’s largest school district, will not return for work for at least several days due to potential exposure to the virus or a positive diagnosis of COVID-19.

“As of last Thursday, we had approximately 260 employees who had been excluded from work due to a positive case or contact with a case. This number is fluid as we continue to have new reports and others who are returning to work,” a spokesperson told CNN.

“Through tracing, we know that the majority of these cases are the result of community spread, meaning we have people who have called in to report who have not been at school or work,” the spokesperson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Gwinnett County, the state’s second-most populous, encompasses a large area surrounding Lawrenceville outside of the state’s capitol of Atlanta. It has reported nearly 18,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, just behind Fulton County, the state’s most-populous county.

Georgia health officials have seen the rate of new infections explode in recent weeks, though the state has been able to stop the 7-day average of new cases from passing 3,500 per day after weeks of the rate rising sharply.

The county has moved to suspend plans to return to in-person learning for schools in the fall due to concerns of rising COVID-19 case numbers, prompting protests from some parents.