What we've learned from reopening schools: Masks work
(CNN) -- As schools reopen across the United States, public health experts warn that the policy around mask wearing could hamper the country's fight against Covid-19. But evidence of the real-life reports about the use of masks leave little doubt about their effectiveness.
In some places where schools have been open for a while, like Georgia and Hawaii, public health experts are looking at what happens when schools follow the science: Classes continue without interruption as long as staff and students wear masks.
But when staff and students don't, COVID-19 can spread, forcing people to stay home in quarantine and classes to go virtual again.
This week alone, several schools have closed, at least temporarily, in Georgia, Indiana and Mississippi due to cluster outbreaks among students and staff.
At a Cobb County elementary school in suburban Atlanta on Wednesday, fifth graders were sent home for virtual learning due to the high number of COVID-19 cases, according to an email from the school district sent to parents and obtained by CNN. Masks are optional for students and staff at the school, according to the district's website, but physical distancing is in place in classrooms when possible.
"This morning, based on our district protocols and under the direction of the Department of Public Health in coordination with district leaders, we have had to make the difficult decision to transition our 5th grade classes to virtual learning due to the pandemic. ongoing COVID-19 and high numbers of positive cases," the email from East Side Elementary reads.
advertisingStudents will learn virtually through Friday, August 20, and will return to their classrooms the following Monday.
Glascock County Consolidated School in Gibson, Georgia, is also in virtual classes until at least August 20. In the first week of school, nine students and four staff members tested positive and 99 students and 11 staff members had to go into quarantine.
In Indiana, Scott County School District 1 told parents Tuesday that "due to the high rate of positive cases and the very high rate of students being quarantined" it would switch to virtual learning beginning Wednesday.
Several schools in Lamar County, Mississippi, switched to virtual learning before the school board voted to keep a hybrid teaching model. During a council meeting Monday, Superintendent Steven Hampton said that while he believes in-person learning is better, a hybrid model would help prevent all schools from switching to the virtual model.
Politics, but not masks, in the classroom
The National Education Association, the largest teachers' union in the United States, has been closely monitoring the reopening of schools.
"In places where schools have highly communicative and collaborative relationships with educators, parents, and community members, and have a near-constant system of communication about the factors surrounding their safety and reopening plans, things are getting better," Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association, told CNN.
"Where they don't communicate well and where politicians try to strip communities of their ability to try to protect themselves, things don't go well."
The implementation of mask requirements in schools has become a topic of politicized debate in some states of the country. As of last week, at least seven states — Arkansas, Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah — prohibit districts from requiring masks to be worn in schools.
However, some efforts have been made to combat it.
In Arkansas, a county circuit judge has temporarily blocked implementation of a state law banning the use of masks in schools, in response to lawsuits by a school district and parents. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott bans the use of masks, but two judges have issued restraining orders that temporarily block the application of Abbott's order.
Meanwhile, there is an ongoing battle in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has issued an executive order directing health and education departments to let parents decide whether students wear masks. His office said Monday that the state board of education could withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who flout the governor's executive order, which effectively bans mask mandates.
Public health officials have urged schools and parents to keep the policy out of classrooms. Dr. Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, implored parents on Sunday to see masks for what they really are.
"This is not a political statement or an invasion of their liberties. This is a life-saving medical device, and asking children to put on a mask is uncomfortable, but children are quite resilient," Collins told George Stephanopoulos of ABC's This Week program.
"If we don't have masks in schools, this virus will spread more widely. It will probably cause outbreaks in schools and kids will have to go back to learning remotely, which is what we really want to avoid," Collins said.
Follow the science and stay in school
Several studies have shown that masks are effective in reducing the spread of covid-19.
In June, a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that other mitigation measures, such as physical distancing and handwashing, are "insufficient on their own" to slow the pandemic if the mask.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said last week during a forum in Boston that authorities monitor each jurisdiction and track outbreaks occurring in camps and schools.
"The places that have a problem, the places that have school-borne illnesses, are the places that are not taking prevention strategies, the places that are not wearing masks," Walensky said. "The places where you see children in the hospital, the places where you see images of children in the hospital, are all the places that are not taking mitigation strategies to keep our children safe."
It's like adding gasoline to a fire
Dr. Andrew Pavia, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah and an expert with the US Department of Infectious Diseases, told CNN that it is not yet possible at this time to make any predictions about how the school year will turn out.
"We hope that for school systems that are not implementing universal mask use and are in communities with high levels of transmission, they can anticipate the spread in schools. It may take several weeks to judge the full impact," Pavia wrote in an email. email to CNN.
"Predictions are challenging, but we expect school districts that employ stratified strategies as recommended by the CDC to have a relatively successful school year."
Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell, regional medical director and family physician at Carbon Health in Reno, Nevada, anticipates more school districts will require mask wearing, COVID-19 testing and other mitigation efforts in the next month or so. or less.
"Dallas and Austin Independent School Districts even defy Texas Governor Greg Abbott's ban on requiring all students, staff and visitors to wear masks," he said. “In regions where mask orders are not being enforced by state or city officials, school districts will have to take the lead.”
Experts call for these preventive measures to be taken now to prevent a rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations of children later.
As of Tuesday, an average of 203 children with COVID-19 were admitted to US hospitals each day over the past week, according to CDC data. This represents an increase of more than 21% compared to the previous week in terms of new daily hospitalizations among patients with covid-19 up to 17 years of age.
In late July, an internal CDC document noted that the delta variant of the coronavirus that is on the rise in the United States appears to cause more severe illness and can spread as easily as chickenpox, detailing that a person infected with the delta variant could spread the virus to five or eight other people on average. With chickenpox, each infected person can infect, on average, eight or nine other people.
Schools that have not yet opened their doors but are preparing to do so in the coming weeks should know that children are at risk of illness, Dr. Purvi Parikh, an allergist and immunologist at NYU Langone Health in New York, told CNN. York and spokesperson for the Allergy and Asthma Network.
"Schools should be very concerned, as children are not only becoming infected, but are sick enough to fill pediatric hospitals. Also, many children are still not vaccinated," Parikh wrote, adding that he urges vaccination. to all who qualify and would recommend the wearing of masks and physical distancing in classrooms.
"We will see more cases and outbreaks. Even before the pandemic we saw an increase in viral infections and hospitalizations when schools reopened due to flu, RSV and other viruses. Now, with a highly contagious variant in a pandemic , it's like adding gasoline to a fire," Parikh wrote. "Children need to learn in person, let's help them get there safely."
CNN's Mallory Simon, Maria Cartaya and Shawn Nottingham contributed to this report.
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