Dr. Fauci Now Says Schools Should Update Their ‘Ventilation Systems’ Before Opening
GEIST: “Dr. Fauci, good morning. It’s Willie Geist. Good to see you again. I want to ask you about schools. Because as you know, the crisis of this last year extends far beyond public health, it’s in our schools now. You have a full year. There’s reports that 3 million kids have not been contacted over the last year, have not reported in to school. Kids without resources, who don’t have Wi-Fi, who don’t have laptops, who just aren’t going to school for a full year, that as implications for education, but also now pediatricians are talking about the psychological impact of being out of school for a year. You have said schools ought to reopen if they can do so safely. The Head of CDC Dr. Walensky had said the same. So why are schools not open in your judgment?”
FAUCI: “Yeah. There are several reasons. It’s complicated. It’s just not easy, you know, open or shot. There are several issues. First of all, you want to make sure that the first and most important thing is to guarantee the safety and the health of the children, of the teachers, and other people in the educational program. We’ve got to make sure that schools have the resources to do the kinds of things they need to do, which would be making sure they have masks and PPE, making sure that ventilation system can be improved to be able to diminish the likelihood that there will be spread of infection. You know, the CDC guidelines are pretty explicit. There are detailed guidelines about what you can do, the kinds of things you can do, the steps, the masking, the distancing, the kinds of things that we know can help protect the children and the teachers. Importantly, the president has made very clear that we want to make teachers a high priority among essential workers. You know in the 1B component of the prioritization are essential workers who want to make sure teachers for vaccination are a high priority within that group. We don’t feel that it is [indecipherable], absolutely every single teacher needs to be vaccinated before you get back to school. But we certainly want to make them a priority. All of those things plus the resources that the schools need to do be able to do the things that would make it safe for the children and the teachers and the educational program to be there. So there are a lot of things that we can do that. But to repeat what we’ve all said, the default position should always be do whatever we can to get the children back to school.”
GEIST: “No question about it. And as you know well, there are private and parochial schools and day cares open across the country. And I think especially here in New York City and big cities. We’ve been surprised how low the transmission rates have been. Schools have been among our safest places. But you’ve got people like the head of pediatric medicine at UCLA writing an op-ed saying it is time to open the schools now. If we are saying follow the science, we are following the science. We’ve looked at the data for the last year that schools are safe. So it leaves a lot of public school parents mystified as to why their school is not open if the transmission rates are so low.”
FAUCI: “That is a good point. But again, there are still things that we can do to make it even safer. And I believe adhering to the CDC guidelines will be very helpful of schools to getting it opened.”
GEIST: “And you talked about ventilation and things like that. Obviously, those are long-term investments that have to be made, and some of that will be in the Covid relief package if it does in fact pass through. But that’s down the road. A lot of that money is allocated for next year. So what do you see if this Covid relief package passes? What is the immediate impact from your public health point of view?”
FAUCI: “You know, I think several things. You know, it’s not going to take a year to rearrange some of the spacing to get children safer at a distance. I know, there is this big concern about six feet versus three feet, but those are things that can be worked out at a different level.”
