Massive testing ramp-up could help reopen U.S. schools
WASHINGTON — Health and education experts say a massive ramp up in coronavirus testing is necessary for most public schools to safely reopen by May — the target set by President Joe Biden.
Children under the age of 16 are not yet cleared by health officials to receive any of the COVID-19 vaccines, and the inoculation of adults is taking longer than expected. Experts say that prioritizing teachers for vaccination is helpful, but it may not be enough, and regular coronavirus testing is imperative for schools to reopen now.
An estimated 300 million tests a month are needed for K-12 schools to reopen, according to the Rockefeller Foundation, which has been studying the effectiveness of COVID-19 testing in schools with federal support.
Brett Giroir, who oversaw coronavirus testing as assistant secretary for health in the Trump administration and worked with Rockefeller on the pilot program for schools, said in an interview that there were roughly 170 million tests available nationwide in January.
The new Biden administration could not say this week how many tests are necessary for schools to reopen, but it acknowledged that adequate testing is one of the issues that must be resolved.
“We do not have nearly enough testing capacity in this country,” Jeff Zients, a counselor to the president and coordinator of the COVID-19 response, said Wednesday as he talked about Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief proposal.
Biden’s administration must overcome a number of obstacles that health, education and even his own experts say are holding schools back, including a scarcity of testing materials, limited funds to purchase tests and the lack of school nurses and other personnel to administer tests once schools have them.
Since students and teachers cannot all be vaccinated right now, schools would need to require protective measures such as physical distancing and regular coronavirus testing to reopen safely, they said.
“Widespread regular testing is the heart of any successful school reopening plan, particularly in the absence of widely available vaccines,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told McClatchy. “If the Biden administration wants to reopen school buildings much more robustly in the first 100 days of its administration, widespread regular testing is the heart of what’s needed.”
Biden has said he would like to see the majority of K-8 schools open by the end of his first 100 days in office, which comes near the end of the regular school year at the beginning of May.