CDC misinterpreted our research on opening schools. It should loosen the rules now.

Keeping schools closed or even partially closed, based on what we know now is unwarranted, is harming children, and has become a human rights issue.

Here are the facts:

First, children are not at significant risk of poor outcomes from COVID-19. As of Tuesday, 288 children have died from the disease in the United States, compared with more than 500,000 adults. While the death of any child is devastating, this is similar to the number who dies from influenza each year. 

And COVID-19 deaths in children and adolescents are magnitudes smaller than deaths from suicide, some now driven by school closure. Coronavirus in children can cause potentially dangerous complications — e.g., multi-inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) — but this is very rare and in nearly all cases treatable. 

Second, viral spread is minimal in schools with appropriate safety precautions, even in communities with a high disease prevalence (significantly higher than the CDC red zone that the CDC suggests middle and high schools be all virtual and elementary schools hybrid).

Dr. Hoeg led a study of 4,876 grade K-12 students and 654 staff members in Wisconsin school districts last fall. COVID-19 test positivity rates reached 41.6% in the community during the study. Notably, despite the majority of ventilation systems not being replaced, with 92% of students wearing masks (no mask wearing during recess), and with variable distancing, there were only seven students (five children grades K-six, and two in grades seven-12) and zero staff who contracted the virus in school.