Francisca Clavijo’s Tuesday began at 5 a.m., not terribly different from when the Berkmar High School cafeteria manager normally begins preparing breakfast for students. But instead of diving straight into her meal prep, she started checking emails.
It’s March 2020, 10 days since the first confirmed case of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in Gwinnett County, and instructions tend to change by the day. Fortunately for Clavijo, Tuesday’s instructions were the same as Monday’s. The Berkmar cafeteria staff are used to putting food on the line on a typical school day, but at 6:30 a.m. they started stuffing hundreds of paper bags with sandwiches.