Story at a glance
- CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday schools experiencing large-scale COVID-19 outbreaks are not following the agency’s health guidance.
- Walensky said large outbreaks are occurring in districts flouting CDC’s guidance on masks and vaccinations.
- Multiple states and school districts are battling over mask and vaccine mandates for students and teachers.
Schools struggling with large-scale COVID-19 outbreaks are not following recommended public health guidance such as masks and vaccines to curb the spread of the virus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walenksy said on Friday.
Speaking during a White House COVID-19 briefing, Walensky said some school districts enduring COVID-19 outbreaks have simply chosen to not follow CDC guidelines.
“Unfortunately many schools have opted not to implement these recommended tools,” Walensky said during a White House COVID-19 briefing.
“We recognize and are closely following cases and hospitalizations in children at the same time as school is reopening. In our outbreak investigations, large-scale quarantines or large numbers of cases are generally occurring in schools because schools are not following our guidance, particularly our recommendation for teachers as well as students age 12 and older to be vaccinated and for everyone, right now, to be masked,” Walensky said.
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As schools and other public spaces work to reopen, the CDC recommends wearing masks while indoors, social distancing when possible, regular screening and testing, frequent hand-washing and, most recently, promoting vaccination.
Much of this advice has been in place for months. Walensky’s comments also come as multiple school districts across the country debate with state governments over mask and vaccine mandates.
“I want to strongly appeal to those districts that have not implemented prevention strategies and encourage them to do the right thing to protect the children under their care,” she added. “We know these multilayered mitigation strategies work.”
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Young children under the age of 12 are not eligible for vaccinations, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hasn’t cleared the vaccine for younger patients. To prevent virus transmission, some states, like Illinois and New York, have mandated vaccination for teachers to cultivate some immunity within classrooms.
The CDC concurrently released two studies that support the need for COVID-19 mitigation efforts in classrooms. One study looked at vaccination coverage among eligible students between the ages of 12 and 17.
Results indicated that a combination of vaccines and public health mitigation strategies — such as masks — substantially reduce infections and severe outcomes.
“Unvaccinated or undervaccinated adolescents can become ill with COVID-19 and spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus in schools, and by extension, in local communities, placing other populations at risk,” the report concludes.
CDC data also reports that 60.7 percent of the American population over the age of 12 years has been fully vaccinated, a higher rate than the national average of 51.9 percent.
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