COVID testing

On Saturday, Boston residents waiting for COVID testing lined up in the rain in a line that stretched more than 200 yards from the community room at the Mildred Hailey Apartments, past the Jackson Square Orange Line station and up Centre Street.

Boston Public Schools students returned to class Tuesday amid a nation-wide rise in COVID cases driven by the highly infectious omicron variant.

After a pool test for COVID-19 in her school yielded a positive result, Ellison/Parks Early Education Center teacher Annie Shah-Solle knew what would come next — rapid tests for each classroom in the school.

Nearly a month into the semester, nurses at BPS schools said the testing program contracted by the state has been lacking, leaving some students untested and the to-do lists of already busy school nurses more packed than ever.