CDC Cuts Distancing Guidance for Schools by Half
I have always thought that putting kids together in poorly ventilated classrooms for long periods, no matter what the separation, was just asking for trouble. Kids are more likely to have asymptomatic infections. They travel back and forth between home and school, making classrooms potential distribution points for infection.
The thing is, there is no evidence of this. The CDC says "[b]ased on the data available, in-person learning in schools has not been associated with substantial community transmission."
Now an just-published study shows there is no difference between three and six feet either. It's a very thorough study of 266 school districts comparing those that maintained six or more feet of separation with those that maintained three or more feet of separation. It controlled for a range of factors including other aspects of the districts management plan (things like mask requirements) and rates of infection in the surrounding community. Once these differences were controlled for, there was no significant difference in infection rates between the two distances.
One wonders, then, whether distance matters at all. The six-foot distance rule comes from research done a century ago. Researchers argue that it is outdated science, and doesn't take circumstances into account. Given the now-accepted idea that the virus is transmitted by aerosols, those could transmit disease as easily at six feet as three feet.
This is an important change because classrooms simply don't have enough space to maintain normal capacity and keep kids six feet apart.
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay
