CDC director says schools can safely reopen without vaccinating teachers

Teachers do not need to be vaccinated against Covid-19 before schools can safely reopen, the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.

“Growing data suggests schools can safely reopen and that safely reopening does not suggest teachers need to be vaccinated,” CDC director Rochelle Walensky told reporters during a briefing. White House press on Covid-19.

“Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for the safe reopening of schools,” she added.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to place ‘essential frontline workers’, which include teachers, the next to receive a Covid-19 vaccine after first prioritizing health workers and residents of long-term care facilities. However, it can take some time for most teachers to get vaccinated as U.S. officials strive to speed up the pace of vaccinations.

Yet school systems across the United States have been under pressure to reopen after the switch to distance learning last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 26.4 million Americans. and killed at least 447,077 in just over a year.

Some parents have been forced to stay at home to watch their children instead of going to work. Meanwhile, teachers and other professors have expressed concerns about going back to school, which could put their health at risk.

A CDC study released late last month found little evidence of the virus spreading in schools in the United States and abroad when precautions were taken, such as wearing masks, social distancing and ventilation of rooms.

The Biden administration has released a Covid bailout that includes providing schools and universities with $ 170 billion to reopen. The money would be used in part to scale up testing. The administration said testing was a “critical” strategy to control the spread of the virus, but additional testing is still not widely available and the United States is still not using what it does effectively.

Walensky has previously said schools should be the first to open and the last to close in the pandemic.

Jeff Zients, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 Tsar, said Wednesday that Biden had been “very clear” that he wanted schools to “reopen and stay open”.

“This means every school has the equipment and resources to open safely,” he said during the press briefing, urging Congress to “do its part” by adopting the Covid bailout by Biden. “Not just private schools or schools in wealthy areas, but all schools.”