Time for schools to return to distance learning

With omicron spreading like wildfire, it is time for schools to forgo in-person school and switch to online learning, at least temporarily until the current pandemic wave is under control. 

In Europe, a number of countries including the Netherlands and Belgium made the decision to close schools a week or so before winter break and to extend the holiday break into mid-January due to the exponential rise in COVID infections among children and overwhelmed hospitals. Hundreds of schools and districts across the U.S. have also decided to go virtual after winter break. 

Meanwhile, more and more colleges and universities are going remote. 

As Ontario-based infection-control epidemiologist Colin Furness argues, schools should not open in January. Furness says that transmission in schools is high and will continue to increase. He states:  

"Transmission in schools has been higher than in the greater community. That's what we expected, particularly primary schools, because these are large, persistent gatherings. For quite a large number of them, especially with kids under 12, vaccination has just started. Kids have been the canary in the coal mine since September. We're opening up and opening up and opening up, and we were going to see the impact in schools. Well, the canary has been choking. It's incredibly unfortunate. And the consequences have been exactly what we would expect them to be, which is transmission. We shouldn't be surprised, but I think we should be incredibly dismayed that this is how we treat our children."

Furness urges parents to not send their kids if schools open. He says, "If schools were to reopen and prevalence is still high, I would advise to resist.  I will not send my children back to school in person with high community prevalence. They will catch COVID. That's not okay. It's not acceptable to me, so that’s my plan."

In New York City, child COVID-19 hospitalizations are up nearly 400 percent since mid-December.
 

Dr. Peter J. Hotez sees the omicron situation as dire. He is the Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine where he is also the Co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics. In his December 26, 2021 interview on MSNBC, Hotez voiced the concern that the convergence of several serious issues signals a very dangerous situation ahead. First, COVID testing mechanisms across the U.S. have collapsed. There are simply not enough tests available to meet the demand. The talk of omicron being mild has not been helpful, says Hotez. COVID-19, after all, can lead to long-term serious health issues known as Long Covid. Hospitalizations are going up steeply in New York City, Washington DC, and other east coast locations, soon across the U.S. 

The Washington Post has reported that in New York City, the "seven-day average of confirmed and probable coronavirus cases there has climbed to 17,334 a day, the highest recorded levels of the pandemic, and a roughly tenfold increase from a month ago." New York Daily News reports, "the state logged 40,780 new COVID cases on Tuesday, according to Gov. Hochul’s office, with 27,774 cropping up in New York City." New York’s daily COVID positivity rate has reached almost 20%. Since the onset of the pandemic, these trends have traveled westward. In Oregon, "weekly new cases of COVID-19 in Oregon were up 25% on Monday, Dec. 27 compared to a week ago, according to the Oregon Health Authority," as reported by the Baker City Herald.

Furthermore compounding the current danger is that fact that only one of the three available antibody treatments work for omicron. Yet, hospitals are unable to provide the monoclonal antibody therapies that work with omicron because they are running out of supplies from state and federal health agencies.

Research has consistently confirmed that long COVID affects one third to more than half of COVID survivors and that the virus replicates across multiple organ systems and lingers in the body for months. The Hill reports, that "while the 'highest burden' of infection was in the lungs and airway, the study showed the virus can 'disseminate early during infection and infect cells throughout the entire body,' including in the brain, as well as in ocular tissue, muscles, skin, peripheral nerves and tissues in the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, endocrine and lymphatic systems."

We should not be dismissing omicron as mild and operating over its exponential spread as if this is the new normal. The risk of the health care system collapsing and of Long COVID are too great. 

The fall term of this school year has seen a severe staff shortage in public schools. With omicron on the move, it is likely that as staff and substitutes fall ill, there will not be enough staff to power the school buildings. With COVID-19 tests in short supply, a lack of a robust surveillance testing program in schools, and recently shortened and loosened quarantine guidance, we will see staff and students in the building who are infected and contagious, contributing to the spread of COVID. 

The risk of working in buildings with a COVID strain that evades vaccines may push out even more teachers who will decide to simply quit, while causing some families to keep their children home out of fear for their health. Without additional mitigation such as respirators for all and regular surveillance testing, we are looking at a very dangerous wave of illness and instability unless we return to virtual learning immediately following winter break for at least several weeks to curb overtaxing the health care system and prevent infections leading to long-term illness and disabilities among school staff, students, and the community.