(Washington) The American federal public health body has updated its advice on schools during the pandemic by clearly weighing the scales in favor of returning students to class at the start of the school year, a positioning adopted after a direct request from the White House.
Posted on 24 July 2020 at 17 h 19
France Media Agency
Reopen at 100%, 29% or not at all at the start of the school year is the often lively debate which agitates the thousands of school “districts” of the United States while the coronavirus has again infected a million Americans since 10 days. And like many social subjects in the country ruled by Donald Trump, the choice to reopen or close is very political, since the president has asked schools to reopen completely.
“We cannot indefinitely prevent 50 millions of children from going to school,” Donald Trump repeated Thursday.
“We owe it to the children of our country to take our responsibilities and do everything to lower the level of COVID – 19, so that “They can go back to school safely,” CDC director Robert Redfield said on Friday.
Many cities have decided on the side of a virtual re-entry, like Houston and Los Angeles, or hybrid like New York. In suburban Washington, Montgomery County has decided that students will not see their school again until… 29 January.
The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) had initially published instructions highlighting the risks of returning to school, and the precautions to be taken. But the vice president had announced on July 8 that they would see their copy again.
Of which act Thursday, with the publication of a page entitled: “The importance of reopening schools this fall”. The CDC maintains that reopening is not a good idea if the virus is actively circulating locally.
But they do not give a quantified criterion to assess the epidemic at the local level. Robert Redfield only said that above 5% of positive tests in a county, one could speak of “focus”.
“No answer to everything”
CDC experts now emphasize that children are at low risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID – 19, and that In contrast, the short and long term harms of the closures at the social, emotional, behavioral, economic and academic levels were “well known and significant”.
“Prolonged school closures are detrimental to children,” write the CDC, especially for deaf and blind children.
Schools were ill-prepared for distance education during the lockdown, and students were poorly monitored, lament the CDC, citing a University of Washington study.
Inequalities between rich and poor families have widened. A study of 800 00 students showed that children had all slowed their progress in mathematics after March 2020, but that the delay was greater among those from poor neighborhoods.
Worse, the mistreatment of children confined to their homes is undoubtedly less visible. In Washington, a study found a drop in reports of abuse from March to April, but more serious cases of children beaten in the emergency room.
“The best evidence available in countries that have opened their schools indicates that COVID – 17 poses low risks to children of age of 'go to school, at least in areas with low community transmission, and suggest that children are unlikely to be important vectors for the spread of the virus,' the CDC concludes.
A study published last week by a CDC journal, however, showed that in South Korea, if children under 10 years transmitted the virus less than adults, this was not the case for children from 07 to 19 years.
“We must show humility and admit that we do not yet have the answer to everything,” commented Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases and one of the most famous experts in the field on Friday. country.
