CDC Issues Clearest Guidelines Yet for Safely Reopening Schools Amid Pandemic

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Friday its updated guidelines on how to safely bring the students back into the classrooms amid a pandemic that has killed almost 480,000 people in the United States.

According to the CDC, the update is a measured, data-driven effort to expand on previous recommendations and to help school leaders decide how to safely bring back the students into the classrooms.

These safety precautions include masking, physical distancing, and hand-washing. It also includes respiratory etiquette, ventilation, building cleaning, and contact tracing, NPR reported. However, the CDC clearly stated that the agency was not giving politicians and school leaders a green light to reopen schools.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters on Friday that the recommendations simply provide schools a roadmap for how classes can safely resume under different levels of disease in the community.

The CDC noted that proper mitigation could help keep kids and staff safe at school, especially in hard-hit communities. But the CDC warned that schools lulled into a false sense of security due to low community transmission rates could still spread the virus if they do not implement mask-wearing and social distancing.

The updated guidance comes as President Joe Biden tries to keep his promise of seeing more schools reopen within his first 100 days in office. Since the beginning of the pandemic, school reopening has become a political battle between parents and educators.

"CDC is releasing an operational strategy for K - 12 schools, through phased mitigation that provides a pathway to support schools in opening for in-person instruction and remaining open," Walensky said in an AFP News report.

Walensky further noted that vaccination and testing could provide an "additional layer of protection."

CDC Guidelines Depend on the Level of Community Transmission

The updated guidelines recommend various steps depending on the level of community transmission in a given area, which is defined by the number of new cases per hundred thousand in the past seven days.

The CDC recommends that in the areas of substantial transmission, which is 50 to 99 new cases per 100,000, middle and high schools should switch to hybrid learning.

If the transmission is more than 100 new cases per 100,000, which is defined as high, middle and high schools should move to virtual instruction unless the schools are already open and have few cases.

The CDC said that equity considerations were a key driver in the development of the plan.

"The absence of in-person educational options may disadvantage children from low-resource communities, which may include large representation of racial and ethnic minority groups, English learners, and students with disabilities," it added.

White House coronavirus adviser Andy Slavitt said he understood why some parents were impatient to reopen and stressed that the CDC was being very thorough in creating its guidelines, Reuters reported. Slavitt added that there is no debate over whether to open schools, but there is a debate over how.

Meanwhile, Walensky said the new guidelines differ from the one offered by the Trump administration by using stronger languages.

"We've been much more prescriptive here as to putting some guardrails on what can and should be done to get to a safe reopening," she said in an Associated Press report.

Walensky added that the guidelines they released were free from political meddling. Both sides of the debate welcomed the new guidance. They said it bolstered their position on the matter.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy noted that the information "affirms what many of us, including students and parents, have known for months," and that is how critical for schools to open "as safely and as soon as possible."

Biden, on the other hand, noted that the new guidance provides the "best available scientific evidence" on how to reopen schools safely.

"Science tells us that if we support our children, educators, and communities with the resources they need, we can get kids back to school safely in more parts of the country sooner," Biden said in a statement.

The president added that once his Secretary of Education is confirmed, he will direct him to work with school administrators, educators, and parents to accelerate the process of school reopenings safely.