Researchers announced last week that schoolchildren do not appear to be contributing to new COVID infections, and the majority of available evidence suggests there is only a limited risk of transmission from the young to adults.
The New York Times reported data seems encouraging that in-person learning could be safe for young children.
Harvard Medical School said earlier this month that most times, children have no symptoms and their “viral load” did not have a direct impact on the severity of their symptoms, the report said.
Dr. David Rubin, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania, told the NYT that when considering the harm keeping schools closed inflicts on students and parents, the recent data indicates in-person learning should be an option.
“I think there’s a pretty good base of evidence now that schools can open safely in the presence of strong safety plans, and even at higher levels of case incidence than we had suspected,” he told the paper.
Dr. Ted Triana, Medical Director for the Syracuse City School District in New York, told The Post-Standard last Saturday there have been no known transmissions in the district’s schools.
He told the paper the district has 22,000 students, and only 19 children tested positive for the virus. He said contact tracers found none of the cases were transmitted in schools.
“They came to the school with it but they did not spread it to other students or employees,” he told the paper.
TRENDPOST: Despite these findings, schools across the nation have shut down. Ignored are the facts that besides young people not being high case transmitters, according to the CDC, 99.997 percent of those aged 1-20 recover from the virus.
