Johns Hopkins experts shared their advice on back-to-school plans for the upcoming academic year amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Elders who want their children to have more social involvement in the coming school year are looking for all sorts of ways to achieve that – whether it’s so-called ‘pandemic bubbles’ outside of school or enrolling their children in childcare programs at schools.
Dr Jennifer Nuzzo, senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety, said whether it is a school that has decided to open or a neighborhood-organized ‘pandemic pod’ that is being formed, the number of children and instructors in each group should be kept low.
“What that will achieve is that if one of those people is infected, then we will know who was exposed,” Nuzzo said.
Schools will need to plan prevention and how they will communicate with staff and parents when a COVID-19 case is reported, Nuzzo said.
If there is a reported case of COVID-19, and the number of students in each cohort is limited, “they do not hope to close the whole school unless they find that the infection has spread outside that cohort,” Nuzzo said.
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Asked whether schools can rely on testing as a way to increase safety against the spread of the coronavirus, Nuzzo took a cautious stance.
“I think that, no matter how we use tests, we absolutely still have to maintain the safety protocols – the distance, and the masks and other things, because no test is perfect and the wrong answers will be generated by these tests. , “she said.
During the webcast, Dr. Josh Sharfstein, vice dean of public health and community involvement practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, on the use of ‘mask breaks’ for children, which are dedicated to removing masks as in recession or in going to school.
Dr Annette Anderson, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, said that Israel’s anecdotal evidence of the spread of the coronavirus – possibly linked to mask defects – suggested that the practice might not be advisable.
Instead, Anderson said, “I think we need to help our young people know how to wear masks.”
But Anderson acknowledged the difficulty of putting young children on with their masks seven to eight hours a day.
She proposed offering some kind of incentive to encourage children to take off the masks, “because it’s part of the safety protocol” to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
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