As students head back to class, are schools ready to handle COVID-19?

(NEW YORK) — As summer begins to wind down, most children and teenagers across the U.S. are getting ready to head back to school.

Not far behind the start of the school year is the typical start of the season for respiratory viruses, including flu, RSV and COVID-19.

Since early May, COVID-19 test positivity and emergency department visits that are diagnosed as COVID-19 infections have steadily increased, although hospitalizations and deaths continue to remain at historically low levels, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Despite these upward trends, school officials from various districts told ABC News that they feel prepared to handle cases of any respiratory viruses that may emerge, and to try and prevent classroom disruptions because of them as much as possible.

“We’re always preparing, and I feel very confident that we’re going to have a great school year, and we’ll get through this respiratory season with no problem,” Kim Baumann, lead county nurse for Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) in Georgia, told ABC News.

Limiting school closures

During the first year of the pandemic, schools switched to remote learning to help stem the spread of the virus.

Since then, individual classrooms and, in some cases, entire schools have temporarily gone virtual when outbreaks have popped up.

This year, schools generally are trying to avoid closing if they can, should another viral outbreak surface, in part to avoid the student academic performance losses widely seen during pandemic remote learning. A recent study conducted in collaboration with the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, for example, looked at math and reading scores for grades three through eight and found that “academic achievement gaps that widened during the pandemic still remain and have worsened in some states.”

Arizona State Superintendent of Education Tom Horne told ABC News that he wants schools to operate normally, regardless of a surge in cases. While noting that Arizona is a “local control state,” meaning that it’s up to the local school boards to decide if they want to close schools, he is adamantly against school closures.

“Closing of the schools that occurred last time was an unbelievable disaster,” he said. “Kids are way behind academically. We’re still experiencing it now, and I think some of them will be affected for the rest of their lives.”

Horne pointed to research that has suggested COVID-19 infection tends to affect children less severely than older adults or those with pre-existing medical conditions.

“So, it makes no sense to close the schools, and I will strongly advocate against it,” Horne said.

By comparison, the leaders in Gwinnett County, Georgia, say they are not advocating for school closures, but that any decision regarding whether classes need to be conducted remotely due to outbreaks will come after conversations with the local health department.

Vaccinating to prevent severe illness

Doctors and other public health experts say that one of the best things students can do to prepare themselves for the upcoming year is to receive the updated COVID-19 vaccine. The CDC recommends everyone aged 6 months and older receive an updated vaccine.

Vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna will be available for those aged 6 months and older, while the Novavax vaccine will be available for those aged 12 and older. The updated vaccine will likely be released either late August or early September and will target the JN.1 variant of the virus, an offshoot of the omicron variant.

The vaccine “reduces, not only the chance for hospitalization, but also reduces disease burden overall, just so that kids and adults alike are not severely impacted by it, and of course, it is continued to be recommended,” Dr. Jay W. Lee, a member of the Board of Directors at the American Academy of Family Physicians, told ABC News.

Lee said sometimes he encounters parents who are reluctant to vaccinate their children because of research suggesting children are not affected by COVID-19 as severely as adults. However, he said he tries to explain to parents that the benefits of vaccinating children far outweigh any risks, using their reluctance as “an opportunity for me to lean in and ask questions about why it is that they’re feeling that way.”

Lee said he also tells parents that “we do continue to have ongoing concerns about long COVID and the impacts that it has on cognitive abilities as well as respiratory and cardiac issues,” adding that “The science is not fully complete yet on the impacts of long COVID, but we are seeing more and more of it as we escape the gravitational pull of the pandemic.”

Kim Baumann, the lead nurse in Gwinnett County, said schools in the district will host vaccine clinics in coordination with the local health department throughout the year “which will include COVID and flu, or however that combination is going to look this coming fall,” further noting that “we always provide frequent vaccine clinics and get that information out to our families to make it readily available.”

Clear language on how to stay safe

School officials said that they are getting the word out regarding when parents should keep their children home from school.

Tom Horne, in Arizona, said whenever a student or staff member is sick – whether they have COVID-19 or the common cold – they should stay home so that they have the proper rest and so they don’t infect others

Baumann said one of the ways officials are preparing for the new school year is to send reminders through schools’ newsletters, websites and other media about best practices to stay safe, including “Good hand washing, [and] using respiratory hygiene, as far as covering your coughs and sneezes.”

Baumann also said there is a team of custodians who make sure schools, particularly in high-touch areas, are cleaned and sanitized throughout the day, especially during peak season of respiratory viruses

She added that children can wear masks to school if they so choose. GCPS is also distributing reminders of reasons to stay home, including if a student develops respiratory virus symptoms such as fever, chills, fatigue, cough, runny nose, and headache, said Baumann.

“We understand COVID is going to be with us. This is not something that’s going away. It’s going to be something that we’re going to have to continue to deal with,” Bernard Watson, director of community and media relations at GCPS, told ABC News. “So, we’ve sort of accepted that as part of our new normal, and that’s why we’re taking all these steps to ensure that we’re hitting the high-touch areas to make sure that they are clean. We have our nurses on standby to deal with situations where students are sick.”

“But the most important thing … is letting parents know and letting our staff know that if [students or staff] feel sick, it’s okay to stay home and seek treatment, because we all know that if we have a healthy environment in our schools, then our kids are learning better,” Watson continued. “But if people are coming to school when they’re sick and they’re spreading it, that’s not good because it puts other people in danger of getting sick, and it interrupts teaching and learning, which is our primary focus.”

Dr. Lee of the American Academy of Family Physicians said one of the best things that schools can do to be prepared for a potential viral outbreak is offer clear policies and language regarding when students should stay home.

“There’s a lot of pressure on parents to send their kids to school. Maybe they’ve got work or job or other obligations,” he said. “Unfortunately, when you send a child to school that has an illness and they’re confined in small spaces – and especially younger kids, [who] are not as good about kind of washing their hands or covering their mouth and those types of things – it can be a source for rapid spread in a community.”

“And so, I think if the schools can continue to have very clear language and policy around when children should stay at home under the guidance of the local public health agencies, I think that would be super helpful,” Lee said.

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