Washington Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, warned Sunday that it will be “very difficult” for school districts to open for the next academic year if there is an uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus within their communities.
“For local school districts, I think they should be on the lookout for spread within the community. If the spread is not controlled within the community, it will be very difficult to open it in that context.” Gottlieb said on “Face the Nation”.
With the fall semester set to begin in the coming weeks, the Trump administration had been urging school districts open its doors to students for in-person instruction five days a week. But the push by President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos comes when Mr. Trump warned last week that the coronavirus crisis is likely to “get worse before it gets better” and acknowledged that school districts at critical points may have they delay the reopening for a few weeks.
Still, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidance on Thursday about the best way to safely open schools for students. The guide requires schools to follow social distancing, recommend that students and staff cover their faces, and keep students in defined groups to reduce contact with others, among other guidelines.
But the CDC did not provide a benchmark for school administrators on when they should move to close a school in the event of an increase in coronavirus infections, which Gottlieb said was “unfortunate.”
“In the context of uncertainty and the lack of specific guidance on how to keep schools open, I think more parents will be wrong on the precautionary side,” he said. “So it is very important to get specificity of what are the difficult metrics that the CDC did not do in targeting.”
Gottlieb said school districts should think about positivity rates in their community, local outreach, and evaluative capacity to guide decision-making about whether to keep a school open or completely switch to online learning. He said a positivity rate between 5% and 10% is “starting to get questionable,” while above 10% is the “threshold where you really want to think carefully about the closure of school districts.”
“That is a sign that there is an ongoing epidemic within that community,” Gottlieb said, adding that it will be difficult for parts of Florida, which is an epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the United States, to open their schools to individuals. learning next month.
More than 30 states and the District of Columbia are experiencing an increase in coronavirus infections, with the epicenter of the epidemic currently in the solar belt. But Gottlieb said there are evidence cases in some states, including Arizona and Texas, that are beginning to stabilize.
While Gottlieb said there are “unmistakable signs” that the epidemic is slowing down in some states along the sunbelt, it is “heating up” in others, including South Carolina, Alabama, Indiana and Illinois.
Many governors have instituted mandates that require people to wear masks when in public spaces and halted their reopens in stages in an effort to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. Gottlieb said states should consider closing bars, limiting the number of people in restaurants, closing movie theaters and other types of indoor entertainment venues, and implementing mask mandates to calm the epidemic, steps that allow states to avoid coming back. to more strict restrictions imposed at the start of the pandemic in March.
In addition to states that issue masking mandates, a number of companies also require customers to wear facial coverage. McDonald’s is among the last to require facial coatings, and the fast-food giant joins Walmart, Starbucks, and others in implementing its own rules for masks.
Gottlieb said he expects more companies to implement mask mandates in places, especially those considered high risk.
“If we can really keep the epidemic under control before winter until we get a vaccine or some kind of therapy that changes the clinical trajectory of this disease, only with masks will it be a relatively simple thing that we can all do that doesn’t really change our lives and It allows us to keep what is really important to us, like keeping some businesses open, like getting our children back to school, “he said.
While Trump has said he will not impose a mask mandate nationwide, he urged Americans last week to wear covers, and said during a White House press conference that “they have an impact.”
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