CDC guidelines for reopening schools
(KYMA, KECY)-The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has quietly released detailed guidance for reopening schools.
In a detailed 60 page document, CDC states the steps needed to stop the spread in schools and camps:
Promote Social Distancing
-Ensure that student and staff groupings are as static as possible by having the same group of children stay with the same staff (all day for young children, and as much as possible for older children).
- Restrict mixing between groups.
-Cancel all field trips, inter-group events, and extracurricular activities (Step 1).
-Limit gatherings, events, and extracurricular activities to those that can maintain social distancing, support proper hand hygiene, and restrict attendance of those from higher transmission areas (Step 2; Note: restricting attendance from those in Step 1 areas).
- Restrict nonessential visitors, volunteers, and activities involving other groups at the same time.
-Space seating/desks to at least six feet apart.
-Turn desks to face in the same direction (rather than facing each other), or have students sit on only one side of tables, spaced apart.
-Close communal use spaces such as dining halls and playgrounds if possible; otherwise stagger use and disinfect in between use.
- If a cafeteria or group dining room is typically used, serve meals in classrooms instead. Serve individually plated meals and hold activities in separate classrooms and ensure the safety of children with food allergies.
-Stagger arrival and drop-off times or locations, or put in place other protocols to limit close contact with parents or caregivers as much as possible.
-Create social distance between children on school buses (for example, seating children one child per seat, every other row) where possible.
According to the CDC, some amount of community mitigation is necessary
across all steps until a vaccine or therapeutic drug becomes widely available.
To read more on the guidance for restaurants, bars, and transit, click here.
