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New York City Public Schools Ease Guidelines as to When to Close Schools Due to COVID

New York City Public Schools Ease Guidelines as to When to Close Schools Due to COVID

     New York City is loosening its policy on when in-person learning in public schools will be closed due to COVID-19 infections, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this morning at his press conference.

     Instead of the schools’ previous rule to close whenever two students or staffers tested positive for COVID, now two COVID cases will only lead to more testing.

      “When there are four or more cases and they're in different classrooms and can be traced to a known exposure within the school, that's when there'll be a closure,” said the mayor, who added that schools reopen 10 days after any closure due to COVID. 

      The rules for individual classrooms, however, remain “very strict,” the mayor said.

      “[In individual classrooms], one confirmed case means going remote,” said Mayor de Blasio, who added that 65,000 adults who work in the public schools have been vaccinated so far. “After ten days, the classroom comes back.”

      The city, which plans to bring back all public schools students: from PreK to high school back to school in-person full time in the Fall, also continues to work with “unions and with all the stakeholders in the school community to ensure additional supports for our kids, both academically and in terms of their emotional needs, their mental health needs, because we're going to be asking a lot of our educators and our school staff as school comes back,” said Mayor de Blasio, who said that schools are the safest place for kids to be.

      Dave A. Chokshi, MD, the city’s health commissioner, said, “When our multiple layers of public health precautions are followed – masking, ventilation, distancing, testing – the virus does not spread easily in schools.

     “As every parent knows, closures also put stress on the entire household. Our goal will always be to keep schools open as much as possible by keeping them safe.”

Photo credit: Tomash Devenishek/Flickr (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)


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