Students safe with less distancing?
Studies suggests 3-foot space sufficient to prevent spreading
As infection rates fall and more teachers receive vaccines, one of the biggest remaining hurdles to reopening schools is the difficulty of spacing students six feet apart, as recommended by federal and state health authorities.
That guidance has meant fewer kids can be in a classroom at the same time, so schools have to rotate students in smaller shifts while others continue studying online at home. But new research suggests that a threefoot space between students is enough to prevent COVID-19 from spreading in schools.
Now, health experts and many parents are calling on the California Department of Public Health to revise its six-foot guidance, as Illinois and Massachusetts have done, as well as the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Our evidence shows schools are operating similarly safely with three feet and not six,” said Emily Oster, an economics and public policy professor at Brown University who was among the authors of a study out this week.
It found no significant difference in K-12 student and staff infection rates in Massachusetts public schools whether they had implemented three-foot or six-foot student spacing when other measures such as universal masking were implemented.
And Oster, who has monitored school reopening nationally through the covidexplained.org website, said that given the constraints that six-foot distancing rules place on school attendance, “it may make sense to relax them.”
This week's study isn't the only research supporting closer student spacing in schools. A January study
on in-person learning at 17 rural Wisconsin schools found no teachers and only seven out of 4,876 students were infected at school, and most elementary students studied were distanced between three and six feet.
“Over three feet is fine,” said Dr. Monica Ghandi, an epidemiologist at the University of California-San Francisco, who this week joined a co-author of the Wisconsin study and two other health experts in a column calling on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to relax its school-reopening guidance.
While the CDC and California public health department don't insist on 6-foot spacing in schools, they have maintained that distance as ideal. The CDC says “physical distancing (at least 6 feet) should be maximized to the greatest extent possible.”
California's most recent guidance issued Jan. 14 is to “distance teacher and other staff desks at least 6 feet … except where 6 feet of distance is not possible after a good-faith effort has been made” and “under no circumstances should distance
between student chairs be less than 4 feet.” The World Health Organization, however, recommends “at least 1 meter for both students (all age groups) and staff, where feasible,” which is a few inches over three feet.
Troy Flint, spokesman for the California School Boards Association, said clearer guidance allowing closer spacing would greatly ease reopening, and particularly in bringing kids back to school full time as opposed to the part-time “hybrid” format most California schools have used to resume in-person learning.
During a webinar this week on the state's recently adopted reopening legislation, several trustees raised questions about conflicting guidance on distancing, he said. Classrooms ordinarily have 20 to 30 students, and space is limited.
“Determining which standard you use and communicating reasons for that and getting buy-in from families and staff in districts has been a challenge,” Flint said.
Adding to the confusion is that, as has often been the case with the pandemic, not
all experts agree. In the fall, studies cast doubt whether even six feet is safe enough, with some reporting that airborne virus could travel 20 feet or more in poorly ventilated settings. Those experts noted that the three- to six-foot recommendations are rooted in late-19th century research on pathogens found in visible respiratory droplets.
Lydia Bourouiba, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-authored an August research paper on distancing guidance and an opinion piece this week, said she would not trust 3-foot distancing.
“Three feet is not recommended, unless it has been carefully assessed for a particular room, activity, and high-grade masking is in place at all times,” said Bourouiba, director of The Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory. “Risk of exposure to the fresh and dense breathing zone of others is too high at three feet.”
Teacher unions, whose safety concerns have slowed school reopening, already are pushing back in Chicago
after Illinois shrank its minimum-spacing requirement this week. Claudia Briggs, spokeswoman for the California Teachers Association, noted that ventilation, mask quality and length of exposure all factor into risk.
“We know that the quality of ventilation and filtration in school buildings has been neglected for years,” Briggs said.
But parents anxious over the effect of prolonged online learning on their kids' education and emotional health are frustrated that state officials aren't heeding the latest science and clinging to guidance that will keep students out of the classroom much of the week if not entirely.
Jolanka Nickerman, mother of two girls in first and third grade in Albany Unified, said her district is already planning one of the region's most limited hybrid schedules, and that the sixfoot guidance is dimming prospects for a full reopening.
“If we don't change to four feet,” Nickerman said, “we won't be able to fit all students in a classroom.”