Dr. Scott Gottlieb warned that Covid-19 could, yet again, force schools to go fully remote amid concerns about potential outbreaks in classrooms this fall.
“Unfortunately, it’s possible, especially if you go into this school year without the kind of mitigation that we had in place last year,” Gottlieb, the former FDA chief in the Trump administration.
Fully Remote School Year Due to Covid ‘Possible’ Without Mitigation Tactics
“We can’t expect to have less measures implemented, in terms of trying to control the infection in schools, and expect the same result, in terms of keeping the infection at bay.”
“This is a much more contagious variant, it might be much more difficult to control this in the school, so the goal should be to keep schools open, and try to keep these measures in place until we see how it goes,” said Gottlieb.
The American Academy of Pediatrics found that children accounted for 15% of all new Covid cases last week. Gottlieb recommended Covid mitigation tools for schools such as masking, keeping children in defined social pods, routine testing and retrofitting air filtration systems.
What comes next depends solely on the situation at hand. There is nothing to be done about it except take care of our healths and get that vaccine to protect us against the coronavirus.
Dr. Gottlieb Talks About How Fast The FDA Approves New Vaccines And Medicines
“I think the agency has done an admirable job in terms of just the authorization of the drugs.
You haven’t seen the scientific constructs that they use for regulatory decision-making advance as quickly on the drug side, as the clearest example is on the vaccine side, clearly over time, the vaccine division has decided based on the science that they reviewed that they can use immunogenicity data.
Tips for Protecting Yourself in the Wild
If you live in a region with low vaccination rates, get vaccinated or revaccinated as soon as possible, socially distance yourself from others, stay away from large gatherings, don’t go indoors with people you aren’t sheltering with (especially in bars), and always wash your hands thoroughly.
