US schools, pressured to reopen in pandemic, to get new CDC guidance

WASHINGTON: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday will issue new COVID-19 guidelines for schools as the Biden administration seeks to fulfill its promise to send most students back to the classroom within its first 100 days.

The top US health safety agency was expected to provide guidance on several measures to mitigate the spread of the virus in the nation's 130,000 elementary and secondary schools, such as hand washing, masking, social distancing and cleaning, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The guidance is also expected to cover ventilation in classrooms, contact tracing and quarantine protocols. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokeswoman did not confirm the specifics of the guidance on Thursday.

Pressure to reopen or expand in-person learning has been building as nearly a year of remote learning has taken a toll on US education and family life. Advocates of reopening have pointed to recent studies showing that classrooms are not hotbeds for COVID-19 infection.

President Joe Biden has promised to reopen most schools within 100 days of taking office on Jan. 20. On Sunday, he described school closures and their negative impact on families as a national emergency.

"I can assure you of one thing: There's no debate over whether to open schools here. There's a debate over how," White House coronavirus adviser Andy Slavitt said on Thursday, adding the CDC plan would help provide a roadmap "to begin to do that aggressively."

In December, the CDC issued guidance on school reopenings that did not recommend schools conduct universal symptom screening of students but encouraged parents to screen their children for COVID-19 symptoms.

The guidance promoted hand hygiene and mask-wearing, and suggested schools decide on reopening after weighing the community's 14-day positive test average and their ability to implement emergency plans if students or staff test positive.

Teachers have called for quicker vaccinations, but a person familiar with the CDC's thinking said the guidance expected on Friday will not suggest all teachers be vaccinated in order to return to the classroom.

Last week, CDC's director Rochelle Walensky said schools can still reopen safely even if teachers are not vaccinated, despite teachers being considered essential workers prioritized for vaccinations.

This week, Biden said teachers should be a priority in getting vaccinated against the virus that has killed more than 470,000 Americans.

School reopenings have been the focus of labor disputes between teachers unions and their districts in major US cities. In Chicago this week, after months of negotiations that included threats of a lock-out and strike, the teachers union and district reached agreement on a safety plan.

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the largest US teachers union with 3 million members, told Reuters she hoped the CDC guidance on Friday would send "a really strong message that we can and must reopen our school buildings and this is how we do it safely."