As another surge of Covid cases has swept the U.S., school districts around the country are pushing to keep classrooms open next week when students return from winter breaks.
Personally, as a parent of two school age kids, I would prefer a online learning environment amongst the new outbreak of Omicron. However, it totally understandable for parents who need to work or don’t have the capacity to teach their children at home; to want them to return to a regular based learning experience.
Officials in the country’s largest school system, New York City’s, said Tuesday that they will double in-school testing of students even without symptoms or exposure, test both vaccinated and unvaccinated students and deploy millions of at-home rapid tests as the city and the state deal with record-shattering daily case counts because of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The city said that officials “strongly encourage” all eligible students to get vaccinated and that all students and staff members “should and are encouraged” to get tested before classes resume Monday.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement, “By doubling Covid-19 testing in schools, getting our students vaccinated, and sending students, teachers and staff home with at-home test kits, we can keep everyone healthy and finish out this school year strong.”
Does it really make a difference to be vaccinated? Outside of lowering the side effects that a person can have with Omicron or the other strains of Covid, the vaccination doesn’t fully prevent catching or spreading Omicron around.
Many have already been exposed to have contracted Omicron even after being vaccinated. So the idea of being vaccinated doesn’t stop the risk at all. Only social distancing and avoiding person-to-person exposure would lower the numbers of those being infected. Hence, many parents are saying no to going back to a normal in-person learning environment.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams, who is scheduled to be sworn in Saturday, said: “The numbers speak for themselves — your kids are safer in school. Thanks to testing, vaccinations and at-home testing kits, we’ll keep it that way.”
At-home testing kits will be given out to classrooms if students test positive, with students taking two tests over the course of seven days. Students who are asymptomatic and test negative can return to school the day after their first tests.
The strategy aligns with what the Biden administration announced this month in its “test to stay” approach, in which, instead of mandatory quarantines for unvaccinated students identified as close contacts of infected peers, students can remain in school if they test negative at least twice during the week after exposure. It is widely recognized that remote learning has hurt children socially, emotionally and academically.
Even so, has anyone else noticed that since the kids went back to an In-person learning environment, the numbers of infected people have risen substantially once more?
