Vaccinated teachers and students are not required to wear masks in school buildings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday as they relax their Covid-19 guidelines.
The changes come amid a national vaccination campaign that will allow children ages 12 and older to be vaccinated, as well as an overall decline in hospital admissions and deaths from Covid-19.
“We are at a new point in the pandemic that we are all very much looking forward to,” said Erin Sauber-Schatz, who heads the CDC task force that develops recommendations on the safety of Americans from Covid-19.
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The country’s leading health agency is not advising schools to require vaccinations for teachers and vaccinated children. And it does not provide guidance on how teachers can know which students are vaccinated or how parents know which teachers are vaccinated.
That will likely make for some challenging school environments, said Elizabeth Stuart, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University who has children in elementary and middle schools.
“Socially, it would be a very strange dynamic if some children were to wear masks and others not. And pursue that? Teachers shouldn’t have to keep track of which children should wear masks, ”she said.
Another potential problem: Schools should continue to have children – and their desks – 3 feet apart in classrooms, the CDC says. However, the agency stressed that spacing shouldn’t be an obstacle to getting children back into schools. And it is said that no distancing is required among fully vaccinated students or staff.
All of this can prove difficult to implement, and that’s why CDC advises schools to make choices that make the most sense, Sauber-Schatz said.
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The biggest questions will arise in middle schools, where some students will be eligible for shots and others will not. If sorting out vaccinated and unvaccinated students proves to be a hassle, administrators might choose to simply maintain a masking policy for everyone.
“The guidelines are really written to allow flexibility at the local level,” said Sauber-Schatz.
Government mandates further complicate matters. Several states, including California and Virginia, require all students to wear masks in school regardless of vaccination. But governors and lawmakers in several other states, including Arizona, Iowa, and Texas, have banned local school officials from requiring masks.
The widespread use of masks is expected to continue this fall in some of the country’s largest school districts, but not in others. Detroit public schools require everyone to wear a mask unless everyone in the classroom has been vaccinated. Philadelphia planned to require masks, but the school district revised the policy based on the new CDC guidelines. Houston will not require masks at all due to Texas law.
What about a Covid-19 vaccination as a prerequisite for going to school? This is widely done across the country to help prevent the spread of measles and other diseases.
The CDC has repeatedly praised such requirements, but the agency did not recommend the measure on Friday as it is viewed as a state and local policy choice, CDC officials said.
At the start of the pandemic, health officials feared schools could become coronavirus cauldrons, triggering outbreaks in the community. However, studies have shown that schools often see fewer transmissions than the surrounding community when certain preventive measures are followed.
The new policy is the latest revision that the CDC made in schools over the past year. In March, the CDC abandoned the recommendation that children and their desks be 6 feet apart, reduced the separation to 3 feet, and abandoned their request for the use of plastic signs.
The new school management says:
—Nobody in schools is required to wear masks during breaks or in most other outdoor situations. However, unvaccinated individuals are advised to wear masks if they are in a crowd for an extended period of time, such as in the stands at a soccer game.
– Ventilation and hand washing are still important. Students and employees should also stay at home in the event of illness.
—Tests remain an important tool in preventing outbreaks. But the CDC also says that people who are fully vaccinated do not need to have such screening.
Splitting students into smaller groups or cohorts continues to be a great way to contain the spread of the virus. However, the CDC does not recommend dividing vaccinated and unvaccinated children into separate groups, and says schools should not stigmatize a group or uphold academic, racial, or other persecution.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, described the new CDC guidelines as “an important roadmap for reducing the risk of Covid-19 in schools”.
The President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, praised the guidelines as “based on both science and common sense.”
“Our ultimate goal remains: to get students, teachers and staff back into school buildings full-time and make sure they are safe while doing it,” she said in a statement, adding that dozens of the union’s affiliates hold vaccine clinics.
US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona pledged to work with schools to help them get children back into the classrooms.
“We know that face-to-face learning provides important opportunities for all students to develop healthy, nurturing relationships with educators and peers, and that students receive essential support in school for their social and emotional well-being, mental health, and academic success,” he said in a statement.
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