Federal health officials stepped up calls for parents and officials to implement safety measures such as universal masking in schools as students return to in-person classes, citing outbreaks that forced many children back to temporary remote learning.
“In our outbreak investigations, large scale quarantines or a large number of cases are generally occurring in schools because schools are not following our guidance, particularly our recommendations for teachers as well as students aged 12 and over to be vaccinated and for everyone right now to be masked,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday.
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The CDC has issued safety guidelines for schools to follow for a return to in-person learning this year, including recommendations to improve ventilation in buildings and to enforce mask-wearing in most settings.
Already, many school districts have had to close buildings temporarily to contend with COVID-19 spread. At least four school districts in Texas suspended in-person classes last week, just when the school year began. Texas schools have increasingly gone against Gov. Greg Abbott’s order banning local mask mandates, a move he said is meant to hand agency back to parents who believe their children would benefit from going to school without the face coverings.
Improving school ventilation systems, testing frequently, and mandating masks “prevent serious illness, hospitalization, and death,” Walensky said. “When our children who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated are surrounded by vaccinated people, they are more protected. And school testing gives communities, schools, and families added reassurance that schools can open and remain open safely by swiftly identifying and isolating cases to effectively limit spread.”
COVID-19 cases are surging among children and teenagers, many of whom are becoming seriously ill and require hospitalization. Teenagers aged 16 to 18 accounted for the greatest increase in cases over the past week, according to CDC data.
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“The environment that our children are in is what affects their risk,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said on Thursday. “If they are around people who are vaccinated, everyone in the household gets vaccinated, that significantly reduces the risk to our children.”
The two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration earlier this week, is the only COVID-19 vaccine to have been approved for use in people age 12 to 15. Pfizer has also begun testing the vaccines in younger children ages 5-11. The FDA is also reviewing clinical trial data from Moderna’s two-dose vaccine in children 12 to 17, though the agency has not issued its approval yet.
