The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday claimed that U.S. schools could reopen safely, even if teachers did not receive the coronavirus vaccine, while the leading U.S. infection expert supported the idea of wearing two face masks.
As some teachers’ unions are failing to resume personal training before teachers are vaccinated, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said: “Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe school reopening.”
And Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading official for infectious diseases, said there was ‘no harm’ if people wanted to ‘double’ for extra protection against Covid-19.
Wearing one mask on top of another is not official government advice. Walensky said at an information session of the Coronavirus task force in the White House on Wednesday that more information will come about the value of the so-called double masking.
Jeff Zients, head of the task force and Joe Biden’s coronavirus tsar, noted that the rate of vaccinations was increasing, following a very rocky start to the vaccine distribution and administration program in late December under the Trump administration.
He said the government in Biden had reached the point where the average daily dose of seven days now averaged just over 1.3 million shots per day in the period from January 27 to February 2.
“We are on track to achieve the president’s goal of 100m shots within 100 days,” Zients said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, new cases and hospitalizations of Covid-19 appear to be in a downward direction in the US.
However, Walensky warned that new Covid-19 variants emerging across the country could threaten the positive momentum.
Walensky cited CDC data showing that social spread and wearing a mask significantly reduces the spread of the virus in the school environment.
Zients called on Congress to pass on additional funds to ensure schools have the necessary resources to support the reopening.
Biden has promised to ensure that almost all primary and secondary schools will reopen to personal education within the first 100 days of its administration.
Teachers are prioritized as “essential workers” under the CDC’s vaccination plans, although many have yet to receive any doses as the country still has a vaccine shortage.
However, the tension between the rocky rollout of the vaccine and the reopening of schools is palpable. The city of San Francisco is suing its own school district on Wednesday for trying to open school doors amid the pandemic.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera, with the support of Mayor London Breed, announced that he had sued the San Francisco Board of Education and the United School District in San Francisco as a last resort to save the remnants of the academic year.
“Not a single public San Francisco student has set foot in their classroom in 347 days,” Herrera told a news conference, calling it shameful and illegal. ‘More than 54,000 San Francisco schoolchildren suffer. They are being turned into Zoom-bies by online school. Enough is enough.”
The school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Teachers in California are next in line for the Covid-19 vaccine, and some have started getting shots in rural areas.
Meanwhile, with the climax of Super Bowl football on Sunday, Fauci has appealed to the waiting parties.
He told people to watch the Super Bowl at home in their own household to avoid the spread of coronavirus.
Elsewhere, the federal government is opening two coronavirus vaccination sites in east Oakland and east Los Angeles, two of the most severely affected communities in California, which are suffering from the Covid crisis.
The facilities will be staffed primarily by officials from the Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Zients calls these sites ‘just the beginning’ of the Biden government’s effort to accelerate the rate of vaccinations, especially in areas hard hit by disease and death.
New York Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi has reportedly been infected with the coronavirus.
Chokshi said he was recently tested, received a positive diagnosis and mild symptoms.
He appeared in public announcements in which he urged New Yorkers to follow coronavirus protocols for wearing masks and to maintain social distance.