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Do You Think Schools Should Have Mask Mandates For The Fall?
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As the new academic year approaches, top US health experts are cautioning that the rise in new COVID-19 cases among children who are still ineligible to get vaccinated is likely to get worse when classes resume.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), more than 121,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the US among children last week, more than 14 times the weekly number as recently as late June.
“Simply stated, the delta variant has created a new and pressing risk to children and adolescents across this country, as it has also done for unvaccinated adults,” AAP President Lee Savio Beers stated.
Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine told CNN this week that this could just be the beginning of the problem as the fall approaches.
“This is happening before school starts. Schools are opening now," Hotez told CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday, Aug. 17. "So, school district(s) open (soon), that's going to be a huge accelerant. ... This is just the beginning, unfortunately.”
Though child COVID-19 cases in the US represent 14.4 percent of all cases recorded during the pandemic, according to the AAP, last week, those cases marked 18 percent of new infections across the country.
In an effort to help curtail the spread of the virus, specifically the Delta variant, which represents nearly all new cases in the US, federal health officials have recommended that children wear masks when they return to the classroom, though some governors have been reluctant to put such a mandate into effect.
“Why tie the hands of the public health officials behind their backs,” Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the US Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee said this week.
“You have two weapons here, one is vaccines the other is masking, and for children less than 12 that's the only weapon they have.”
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