Now that COVID-19 vaccines are available to children ages 5 to 11, can schools drop mask mandates without fear of virus outbreaks?
According to one expert, schools may be able to ditch masks by the end of this year. Others are not so sure.
“We have all the tools we need in place such that we can start to remove these mask mandates in school.” Dr. Joseph Allen of the Harvard School of Public Health said in a recent interview with NBC News. “I propose we wait until the end of this year, give people enough time.”
Allen noted that masks have worked to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in schools and he understands that parents may be anxious to send their children to class without a mask. Yet, he said children are not a susceptible to serious illness.
“Fortunately, for kids, this virus has spared them the fate that adults have had. The risk to kids from severe disease and deaths has been low,” he said.
Dr. Megan Fitzpatrick of the University of Maryland has a different perspective.
“Look, we need to use data, not dates,” she told NBC News.
More than 6.5 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 from the onset of the pandemic through Nov. 4, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“COVID cases among children remain extremely high,” said the academy. “For the 13th week in a row child COVID-19 cases are above 100,000.
Since the first week of September, there have been almost 1.5 million additional child cases.”
Even if children don’t suffer from severe cases of COVID-19, they can pass the virus to others in their community.
“I think there’s still a lot of hesitancy among parents to be addressed and a lot of access issues,” said Fitzpatrick.
According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 30 percent of parents surveyed said they would not get their child a COVID-19 vaccine.
“Parents’ main concerns when it comes to vaccinating their younger children ages 5-11 have to do with potential unknown long-term effects and serious side effects of the vaccine, including two-thirds who are concerned the vaccine may affect their child’s future fertility,” said the foundation.
Some schools have already dropped mask mandates and others resisted them before vaccines for children were released. This week, Palm Beach County Schools in Florida announced a mask mandate was ending and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said he would allow schools in the state to end or modify mask mandates for K-12 schools starting Jan. 17.
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While some schools prepare to end mask requirements, an indoor mask mandate for students at Jackson Public Schools in Michigan was re-instated this week due to an outbreak. Active cases have been reported among 70 students and 15 staff members.
“I think everyone should continue to mask – even if they are vaccinated – if there is substantial or high transmission in your community,” said Fitzpatrick.
Her recommendation follows the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention masking guidance for virus prevention.
Allen believes CDC guidance is flawed and said he wouldn’t mind sending his own children to school without a mask. However, Allen stressed that he feels this way because most of the people his children come in contact with are fully vaccinated.
“We’re sleepwalking into indefinite masking is really what’s happening,” he said of mask mandates.
Fitzpatrick, on the other hand, said she would not send her children to school without a mask if there was high transmission in her area.
Per CDC data released Nov. 5, 87 percent of the US population was living in a county that currently has a high or substantial level of transmission.
“It definitely worries me. I think we are jumping the gun a little bit,” Bicette-McCain of an associate medical director at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN of easing mask mandates. “We saw this happen in June over the summer when we declared the pandemic to be over a bit too early. We decided that those who are vaccinated need not wear masks, which turned into everyone not wearing masks and then subsequently the spike and the Delta wave followed.”
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