In The News: What Parents Need to Know About the C.D.C.’s Covid School Guidelines

The CDC released new COVID-19 guidelines for schools. The agency’s advice on mask-wearing, vaccinations, and social distancing comes amid concerns about the Delta variant. Read on for the biggest suggestions that will impact schools reopening this Fall.

With less than a month to go before many schools begin reopening for the fall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday released new guidelines for preventing Covid-19 transmission in schools. The guidelines outline numerous strategies that schools can take to help keep students, teachers and staff members safe, including masking, weekly screening testing and social distancing. But the agency also stressed that schools should fully reopen even if they were not able to put in effect all of these measures. The agency also left much of the decision-making up to local officials, urging them to consider community transmission rates, vaccination coverage and other factors. This approach won praise from some experts, who said that this more nuanced approach makes sense at this stage of the pandemic — but criticism from others, who said that state and local officials were not equipped to make those judgments and needed clearer guidance. Here are answers to some common questions about the new guidance.

Read this full article in the New York Times: What Parents Need to Know About the C.D.C.’s Covid School Guidelines