CDC: Schools should reopen this fall

Health agency downplays risks but offers guidelines for masks, distancing

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top public health agency issued a full-throated call to reopen schools in a statement that aligned with President Donald Trump’s pressure on communities, listing numerous benefits of being in school and downplaying the potential health risks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the statement, along with new “resources and tools,” Thursday evening, two weeks after Trump criticized its earlier recommendations on school reopenings as “very tough and expensive.” His words ratcheted up what was already an anguished national debate over how soon students and teachers should return to classrooms.

“Reopening schools creates opportunity to invest in the education, well-being and future of one of America’s greatest assets — our children — while taking every precaution to protect students, teachers, staff and all their families,” the agency’s new statement said.

Trump, pummeled with criticism over his handling of the pandemic, sees reopening the nation’s schools this fall as crucial to reinvigorating the economy and to his reelection. While many public health experts and pediatricians agree that returning children to classrooms is critically important, they warn that it has to be done cautiously, with a plan based on scientific evidence. They,

along with teachers unions, have accused the president of putting children and the adults who supervise them at school at risk by politicizing the subject.

The new package of CDC materials began with a statement titled “The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools This Fall” that repeatedly described children as being at low risk for being infected by or transmitting the virus, even though the science on both aspects is far from settled.

But the package is actually a hybrid of sorts. Beyond the political-sounding opening statement, it included checklists for parents, guidance on wearing face coverings, mitigation measures for schools to take and other information that some epidemiologists described as useful. This more technical guidance generally did not counter the agency’s earlier recommendations on school reopenings, such as keeping desks 6 feet apart and keeping smaller-than-usual groups of children in one classroom all day instead of allowing them to move around.

The guidance suggests schools take measures like keeping students in small cohorts, having one teacher stay with the same group all day and using outdoor spaces. It also suggests planning for how to handle when someone in a school tests positive, including developing plans for contact tracing. It also includes strategies to support students of various ages wearing masks. For parents, it suggests checking their children each morning for signs of illness before sending them to school and talking to them about preventive measures.

While most research suggests children infected by the coronavirus are at low risk of becoming severely ill or dying, how often they become infected and how efficiently they spread the virus to others is not definitively known. Children in middle and high schools may also be at much higher risk of both than those under 10, according to some recent studies, a distinction the opening statement did not make.

The new statement came from a working group convened by officials at the Department of Health and Human Services after Trump made his critical comments. A federal official familiar with the group said it included minimal representation from the CDC, which already had written most of the other material released Thursday.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an agency within the Health and Human Services Department, took the lead in writing the statement, which focuses heavily on the positive effects on children’s mental health from going to school.

Experts on the subject at the CDC were cut off from direct communication with the working group after their input on the statement was interpreted as being too cautious, the official said. Instead, the group communicated directly with the office of Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC director, which did seek input from experts at the agency. But the CDC was by no means in charge, the official said.

In a call with reporters Friday, Redfield said that he understood the “trepidation” many parents and teachers were feeling about reopening schools and that decisions should be made based on levels of infection in each community.

The new materials, he said, were not meant to replace the CDC’s earlier guidance on school reopenings but “to really help put some more granular detail in how administrators and parents can begin to think about putting those guidelines into a practical plan.” Still, he said, “The goal line is to get the majority of these students back to face-to-face learning.”

A poll released this week by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 60 percent of parents overwhelmingly prefer that schools wait to restart in-person classes to reduce infection risk.