In the past few weeks, South Carolina has set records for Covid-19 hospitalisations and new cases have approached peak levels of last winter.

Classes, schools and entire districts have gone virtual, leaving parents frustrated and teachers quitting weeks into the school year.

Since ending South Carolina’s state of emergency on June 7, Republican Governor Henry McMaster has maintained that parents alone should decide if children wear masks in schools, even as the state's new cases soared from 150 a day on average to more than 5,000.

Now teachers, students and parents are struggling with the fallout as more young people contract the delta variant, forcing nearly two dozen schools and two entire districts — a number that shifts daily, usually upward — back to online learning within a month of returning in person.