CDC school guidelines mostly same as state’s

The education community waited was eager to hear what the CDC had to say about schools opening.

The education community waited with bated breath last week, eager to hear what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had to say about schools opening up amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The CDC was expected to issue updated guidelines, ones that mirrored newly minted President Joe Biden’s repeated support of making sure kids were safely back in classrooms.

On Friday, those guidelines were released.

For the most part, they’re not much of a departure from what’s already been going on in Pennsylvania. While they do include some slightly new wrinkles, much of what was included is stuff that the state Department of Education has already been urging schools across the commonwealth to do.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said what’s happening in Pennsylvania is aligned with the new guidance and that there are no changes to the state’s guidance at this time.

But, the spokesperson said, state officials are carefully reviewing the new information and will provide updates accordingly given future changes.

When should schools be open?

The most important pieces of the CDC guidance, and one area where it differs a bit from current state practices, is information on the circumstances under which students should be attending classes in person.

The CDC provided a rubric similar to one the state Department of Education has been using to show the risk of community spread of COVID-19. Community spread means people have been infected with the virus in an area, including some who are not sure how or where they became infected.

The CDC, like the state, uses two kinds of data to rate the risk: incidence rates and the percent positivity of diagnostic testing.

The COVID-19 incident rate is how many people out of 100,000 have tested positive for the disease over the past seven days. The percent positivity is the percentage of people tested over a sevenday span that test positive.

The CDC model has four levels of risk, one more than the state version:

• Low: An incident rate of less than 10 per 100,000 residents over the past seven days and a sevenday positivity rate less than 5%.

• Moderate: An incident rate of 10 to 50 per 100,000 residents over the past seven days or a seven-day positivity rate of 5% to 7.9%.

• Substantial: An incident rate of 50 to 99 per 100,000 residents over the past seven days or a seven-day positivity rate of 8% to 9.9%.

• High: An incident rate of 100 per 100,000 residents or greater over the past seven days or a seven-day positivity rate of 10% or greater.

Schools in areas with a low or moderate risk are recommended to have full in-person classes for all students. Sports and extracurricular activities are allowed to take place, however, schools in

moderate risk areas should only allow students to take part in activities where they can social distance by at least 6 feet.

The recommendation for schools in substantial risk areas is for a hybrid model, where students take a mix of virtual and in-person classes to decrease the number of people in school buildings at one time. Only sports and activities that can be done outside with 6 feet of distance between students should be held.

Elementary students are recommended to stick with a hybrid model even in high risk areas, however, middle and high school students should have a fully remote model. Sports and other extracurricular activities should only be done remotely.

According to the most recent data from the state Department of Health, Berks County has an incident rate of 134.6 and a percent positivity

of 9.4%. That places the county in the high risk category.

Berks is also in the most severe of the state’s three risk categories, and has been since mid-October.

Mitigation strategies

No matter what risk category a school is in, the CDC guidance says there are certain mitigation strategies that should be used when students are attending classes in person.

Those strategies are nothing new for Pennsylvania schools, as they’re all included in guidance the state provided before the start of the school year. And each school district in the state had to complete and submit a plan detailing how they will implement them.

The CDC guidance says the most important mitigation efforts are making sure all students and staff wear masks and physical distancing of at least 6 feet.

The other steps the CDC recommends are:

• Proper hand washing and respiratory etiquette

(like covering your mouth with your elbow when you cough).

• Making sure buildings are adequately cleaned and sanitized.

• Using contact tracing and quarantines when cases arise.

The CDC guidance says mitigation strategies work best when they’re all done together. It also says that at all levels of risk, distance options should be available for students at increased risk of severe illness.

Vaccine and testing

One thing that the new CDC guidance does not say, and something that teachers across the U.S. are disappointed it does not, is a mandate to have teachers vaccinated before opening up schools.

But the guidance does urge states to make sure teachers are made a priority in vaccine distribution plans.

The CDC guidelines say teachers should be placed in the 1B phase of vaccine distribution, behind only health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities.

Teachers are included in Pennsylvania’s 1B group, however, the state has expanded its 1A group. Along with health care workers and long-term care residents, the state in mid-January decided to add anyone over 65 and younger people with pre-existing health conditions to the 1A group.

The new CDC guidance also delves into testing.

It does not require schools to provide COVID-19 testing, but encourages them to use testing as part of an overall mitigation strategy.

The guidance says schools should offer referrals to diagnostic testing to any student, teacher or staff member who exhibits symptoms of COVID-19 at school.

Additionally, schools can choose to using screening testing to help identify cases and prevent transmission. The guidance said weekly screening testing can be a good addition to schools’ mitigation strategies.