Dr. Anthony Fauci said he thinks it is “a bit of a stretch” to say schools should not open this fall.
“Children can get infected, so, yes. So, you’ve got to be careful,” Fauci said, who is head of Trump’s coronavirus response team, in a CNN interview. “You got to be careful for them, and you got to be careful that they may not spread it. Now, to make an extrapolation that you shouldn’t open schools, I think, is a bit of a stretch.”
Fauci would not make any concrete statements on if it would be safe or not for children to resume classes in the fall because it all depends on the area a school is in. “When you talk about children going back to school and their safety, it really depends on the level of viral activity and the particular area that you’re talking about,” Fauci said.
He believes now is the right time to discuss what schools are going to do in the fall. Some schools will be fine to operate normally, and some will have to make changes, Fauci said.
“You know, modifications could be breaking up the class so you don’t have a crowded classroom, maybe half in the morning, half in the afternoon, having children doing alternate schedules. There’s a whole bunch of things that one can do,” Fauci said.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is launching a study of how the coronavirus affects children, but Fauci said the results will not be available until December.
Parts of the country have allowed restaurants, bars, stores, and movie theaters to begin opening again. However, most have strict guidelines on how many are allowed in the building and how close people are allowed to be.
