While states like Georgia have rushed to open up nonessential businesses like tattoo parlors and spas, schools are (thankfully) still closed. But as President Donald Trump pressures state officials to rush reopenings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials are attempting to help schools, childcare programs, and camps adjust accordingly.
“Many states have closed schools for the academic year and, with summer quickly approaching, an increasing number of working parents may need to rely on these programs,” the agency stated in the document.
It went on to advise that: “As businesses and other organizations gradually open after the COVID-19-related slowdown, they will need to consider a variety of measures for keeping people safe. These considerations include practices for scaling up operations, safety actions (e.g., cleaning and disinfection, social distancing), monitoring possible reemergence of illness, and maintaining health operations.”
Read the guidance from the CDC below:
CDC’S INTERIM GUIDANCE FOR SCHOOLS AND DAY CAMPS
As communities consider a gradual scale up of activities towards pre-COVID-19 operating practices in centers for learning, such as K-12 schools and summer day camps, CDC offers the following recommendations to keep communities safe while resuming peer-to-peer learning and providing crucial support for parents and guardians returning to work. These recommendations depend on community monitoring to prevent COVID-19 from spreading.
Communities with low levels of COVID-19 spread and those with confidence that the incidence of infection is genuinely low (e.g., communities that remain in low transmission or that have entered Step 2 or 3) may put in place the practices described below as part of a gradual scale up of operations. All decisions about following these recommendations should be made in collaboration with local health officials and other state and local authorities who can help assess the current level of mitigation needed based on levels of COVID-19 community transmission and the capacities of the local public health and healthcare systems, among other relevant factors.
CDC is releasing this interim guidance, laid out in a series of three steps, to inform a gradual scale up of operations. The scope and nature of community mitigation suggested decreases from Step 1 to Step 3. Some amount of community mitigation is necessary across all steps until a vaccine or therapeutic drug becomes widely available.
• For all steps: Establish and maintain communication with local and State authorities to determine current mitigation levels in your community. Protect and support staff, children, and their family members who are at higher risk for severe illness. Provide staff from higher transmission areas (earlier Step areas) telework and other options as feasible to eliminate travel to childcare programs in lower transmission (later Step) areas and vice versa. Follow CDC’s supplemental Guidance for Child Care Programs that Remain Open.
Encourage any other community groups or organizations that use the child care facilities also follow this guidance.
• Step 1: Restrict to children of essential workers
• Step 2: Expand to all children with enhanced social distancing measures.
• Step 3: Remain open for all children with social distancing measures.
Read the CDC’s complete overview of how schools and camps should respond here.
The guidelines don’t, however, mean the rise in COVID-19 cases in the United States has started to level off. There were more than 1.5 million cases of the virus in the United States and 93,061 resulting deaths, the CDC reported Thursday.
Sen. Lamar Alexander asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, earlier this month how he would advise a university chancellor to assure families that returning to school in August is safe, and it seems the doctor believes it’s too soon to be able to.
"I would tell [the chancellor] that, in this case, that the idea of having treatments available, or a vaccine, to facilitate the re-entry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far," Fauci said.
He added that "we should be humble about what we don't know" regarding how the coronavirus affects children.
