Kids Who Get Sick From Covid Are Also Missing Out on School Lunches

First Jill Carey and her children got sick. Then they got hungry. Then the family came down with Covid-19 in early December, Carey’s son and daughter had to isolate at their home in Pennsylvania for two weeks. That meant missing school — and the reduced-price lunches the kids rely on. “I felt like I was rationing,” said Carey, a 39-year-old single mother. “I have a loaf of bread. We’ve got to make the loaf of bread last all week.” America’s low-income families, already burdened with surging food inflation and the pandemic’s lasting economic blow, are now facing a new set of challenges when it comes to feeding their kids. Intermittent, often unpredictable, interruptions to schooling can also mean losing access to the free and subsidized school meals that have long been a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to combat child hunger.