CDC issues new guidelines for reopening schools as public health experts call for the U.S. to shut down again.
Agency doesn’t specify when to close classrooms
New Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines call for students to wear masks, wash their hands frequently and socially distance to protect against COVID-19.
What they don’t do is say when schools should not be open at all.
A key consideration for school administrators, CDC said, was COVID-19 transmission rates in their communities.
But the CDC guidance offered no specific metrics for what transmission rates would require specific actions.
The agency suggested that parents label face masks with permanent marker and have children practice putting them on and taking them off without touching the cloth. They should make a labeled, resealable plastic bag to store the mask at lunchtime.
The guidelines also say that people who have had mild to moderate COVID-19 can come out of isolation after 10 days and don’t need to be retested before going back to work. Symptoms, not testing, are the guide. If patients had a fever, it needs to have been gone for at least 24 hours.
The CDC, the nation’s top public health agency, has faced considerable political pressure from President Donald Trump and others to get schools reopened.
Public health experts have pushed back, urging caution. Community transmission levels of COVID-19 are key to reopening schools, they say, and in many parts of the country they continue to rise even as officials plan for school reopenings.
“It is critically important for our public health to open schools this fall,” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said in a statement.
“I know this has been a difficult time for our nation’s families. School closures have disrupted normal ways of life for children and parents, and they have had negative health consequences on our youth. CDC is prepared to work with K-12 schools to safely reopen while protecting the most vulnerable,” he said.
In communities where there is substantial, uncontrolled transmission, schools should work closely with local health officials to decide whether schools should close, the CDC said. The guidelines come as a group of more than 150 health professionals urged a sweeping shutdown, with the nation’s non-essential businesses closing and restaurant service limited to take-out.
In other developments: h Gary Tibbetts, a staff member for Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-fla., died of COVID-19 in a Florida hospital, the congressman announced Friday. Tibbetts is the first congressional aide known to have died from COVID-19.
h Authorities faced with limited space to store bodies awaiting autopsies are now bringing in a refrigerated cooler to help as the coronavirus pandemic surges in Hinds County, Mississippi.