In-Person Schooling Outweighs Risk Of COVID-19: PA Health Experts

PENNSYLVANIA — With COVID-19 cases fueled by the omicron variant skyrocketing to the highest levels of the pandemic in Pennsylvania and elsewhere around the nation, many schools are considering or have made the shift to virtual learning. However, the latest guidance from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's PolicyLab is that maintaining in-person instruction outweighs the risk of infection for children.

The Lab's experts note that the vaccine's expanded availability to all adults and children in the K-12 age group, along with the fact that new infections are becoming milder in most children, makes in-person learning an acceptable risk.

"Our support to reopen schools is founded on the knowledge that — within our own health system as well as others across the country and globally — the spectrum of illness with omicron is much milder," the Lab wrote in its latest COVID-19 outlook. It said that "the time has come to pivot towards solutions that prioritize normalization of in-school education alongside practical safety measures that can manage the worst of this resurgence."

The Lab pointed both to the importance of in-person schooling to the mental health of children as well as the way closures impact impoverished underfunded districts even more dramatically.

"Failure to pivot quickly risks closure of many under-resourced schools, which have been disproportionately impacted by staffing shortages, and whose communities have had more limited access to testing," the Lab adds. "This has heightened equity concerns in access to in-school education and associated supports in many communities."

The Lab also released new recommended guidance, based on updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which places a stronger emphasis on masking in schools as a mitigation measure. The Lab recommends that masking be required in schools until case rates and hospitalizations in the area go down.

Due to the virus's widespread prevalence, it is no longer recommended that teachers and students without symptoms be tested for the virus on a weekly basis. Those who have mild symptoms should still be tested.

Furthermore, under the new guidance, those who are exposed to COVID-19 but still have no symptoms are now still welcomed to attend school but should undergo a "modified quarantine" in which they are required to wear a mask at all times for seven days.

Not all teachers agree with loosening restrictions and mitigation measures.

A teenager died in a Philadelphia school from the virus last month, which sparked a mass protest and walkout by dozens of teachers who said the district had not done enough to protect faculty and children.

The American Federation of Teachers in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, is asking the Department of Education to do the opposite of the what the PolicyLab recommends: Either significantly tighten mitigation measures or require all schools to go virtual for a week.

"Everyone is fully aware that in person learning is the best for kids, educators and society as a whole," union president Arthur Steinburg said in a statement, "however, it has to be done in safe circumstances."

Read the PolicyLab's full recommendations online here.