School Risk

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:05 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: Data are mixed but concerns remain about school openings, Elizabeth Tracey reports

A reopened school in Israel has seen a wave of COVID infection after allowing kids to remove their masks, a recent report indicates. Yet studies of spread in households and the fact that kids are largely not as severely affected by COVID has empowered others to assert that schools should open. Aaron Milstone, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins, comments.

Milstone: Although the risks of kids spreading it to each other may be perceived by some as low, because the complications of children may seem less risky than they are in adults, that is a little bit blind to the risks that those kids in school are imposing on their teachers and all the other staff at school that may have diabetes or other comorbidities that put them at increased risk for infection. I caution people in saying that children don’t play a role and its safe to send kids back to school because they’re not a driver of this infection.   :34

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.