According to the new guidelines for schools released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday, most students need to be only 1 meter apart in classrooms – just half of the six feet first passed through the desk recommended to contain the spread of COVID-19. schools.
The update could pave the way for more classes to back to personal learning, such as the Biden administration urges schools to reopen. For weeks, federal officials have acknowledged that some school districts would not be able to meet the guidelines set by the CDC in February, despite a infusion of funds of the recently adopted US bailout plan.
“This is an urgent issue. I understand the mental health challenges. I understand the educational challenge, the food insecurity. This is urgent,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, on Thursday at a Senate hearing on the need to reopen schools.
Combined with wearing a mask and other mitigating measures, the CDC’s revised guidelines ensure that most students are only 1 meter apart in classrooms. However, in secondary and secondary schools, students must be “6 feet apart” in “high” transfer communities when students cannot be grouped into “cohorts”. A cohort or “pod” is defined by the CDC as “a separate group that stays together throughout the school day during personal learning.”
About 40% of counties remain on “high” broadcasts, according to CDC figures. The updated guidance describes community transmission as a “warning system” of the risk of COVID-19 spreading in schools. As levels rise, drivers are encouraged to “impose restrictions on sports and extracurricular activities to protect personal learning.”
Adults, who tend to get sicker and spread the virus more quickly than children, are still urged to keep 6 feet away from students and others teachers and staff at school.
At least six feet away is still recommended for students of all ages when masks cannot be worn, such as when eating, and during activities such as singing, sports, or band exercise that involve ‘increased exhalation’. These types of activities “should be relocated outdoors or to large, well-ventilated areas whenever possible,” the guidelines said.
“These updated recommendations provide the evidence-based roadmap to help schools reopen safely and remain open to in-person instruction,” said Dr. Walensky in a statement.
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In releasing its new guidelines, the CDC cited new research of schools that had been safely reopened. In a study of Utah elementary schools unable to space desks more than three feet apart “due to space constraints,” researchers found little transmission “despite the high prevalence in the community.”
The latest studies “provide fairly compelling evidence that if a school has their students stationed 1 meter apart, compared to those schools where their students are 1 meter apart, there does not seem to be a big difference in the speed of new students. [COVID-19] cases, “Dr. Sophia Jan, chief of general pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center, told CBSN. She noted that other measures, such as wearing a mask, keeping students in cohorts if possible, and vaccinations for teachers are also important.
President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, told CBS News that the union is “passing judgment” on the new recommendations and should review the latest studies.
“I’ve been hearing from educators all week that this change is really insecure and unfortunate at the moment,” Weingarten said. “We know students have to be in school. But I’ve heard a lot of people say, how much more change can we do in a year? How many times can we change for a dime?”
The agency’s updated guidelines also include new recommendations to conduct screening tests, both “for schools using less than six feet” and in support of extracurricular activities, such as sports.
Several school systems have implemented such test campaigns, where students and staff are checked daily for COVID-19 with rapid go through tests. On Wednesday, Biden’s government announced it would put billions of dollars into ramping up screening tests for more classrooms.
“We know there are schools that have tried to do it and struggled to have the resources to do it. And so we want the resources out there, and we want to attract school reopenings,” said Carole Johnson. , COVID-19 from the Biden administration. testing tsar, told reporters Wednesday.
The changes come after weeks of growing frustration with the Biden government’s original guidelines, which critics say created unfounded hurdles for local school officials attempting to chart a return to personal learning.
A growing body of studies on schools that reopened in the past year have revealed sparse COVID-19 transmission at distances of less than 6 feet, while other measures – such as wearing universal masks – have been enforced. Research published earlier this month in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases comparing school districts in Massachusetts found similar rates of COVID-19 for both the 3- and 6-foot requirements.
The CDC also released a study this week suggesting that school closures risked “negative mental, emotional or physical health outcomes” and had disproportionately affected black, Hispanic and multiracial families.
“Keeping schools closed or even partially closed, based on what we now know, is unjustified, harms children and has become a human rights issue,” authors of research underlying the CDC’s earlier guidelines wrote in an op-ed published by USA Today. month, arguing that the agency had misinterpreted their findings.
The CDC’s revisions align the distance recommendations for schools with those of others, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization.
Some communities in the US had already cited those guidelines to ignore the CDC’s 6-foot recommendation and set their own rules for social distance between students’ desks, from Palm Beach County in Florida to schools across Massachusetts.
“The question, I think, for the administration and for the schools in the country is not whether they can be open, but how,” Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House, said Wednesday.
Natalie Brand contributed to the reporting.