A slew of schools across America are reinstating mask mandates amid a surge in positive Covid tests – despite evidence they harm children’s learning.
Kinterbish Junior High School in Alabama has asked all students, staff and visitors to start wearing face masks in classrooms and hallways ‘due to the slow rise of Covid cases in the area’ since late last month.
Alabama’s Talladega City School district which serves more than 1,700 students has also urged children and staff to wear masks, but stressed they are ‘encouraged but not required.’
Meanwhile, a Maryland elementary school sparked outrage this week after saying students must don tightly-fitted N95 masks for 10 days, despite only a handful of schoolkids testing positive for Covid.
New York health officials are also providing free masks to schools in the state in response to rising Covid rates and absences, while face coverings are being strongly encouraged in some classrooms in Los Angeles.
The new calls for masks are a throwback to the dark days of the pandemic and come despite the growing body of evidence that masks were not only not effective at preventing the spread of the virus, but also hampered children’s learning, social interactions and natural immunity to other infections.
Kinterbish Junior High School, in Cuba, Alabama, has around 120 students aged between five and 14, while Talladega City Schools district has 1,792 students aged four to 18.
New York State will also send masks and Covid tests to school districts that need them.
Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Tuesday that an outreach survey will be sent to districts in the state asking if they need supplies, which will then be sent out.
Case rates are slowly climbing in the US. The test positivity rate – the share of swabs that come back positive – has soared from 6.7 percent in the week ending July 15 to 13.5 percent by August 19, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
Schools in Los Angeles, which previously had some of the strictest Covid measures in the country, including mask mandates, 10-day illness quarantines and weekly Covid testing, have also opted for an optional masking policy.
But the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has more than 429,000 kindergarteners through 12th grade, has taken an even more relaxed approach to illness.
Los Angeles schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho urged students to come to school even if sick to combat high rates of absence.
He told the LA Times: ‘We’re back at a point — based on high levels of vaccination, therapeutics available and children’s higher resiliency than most — where if a child is mildly sick — no fever, just maybe the sniffles — it is OK for them to go to school.
‘There are ways of mitigating against that: some good meds, a mask and monitoring.’
Last month, a Kentucky school district canceled classes less than two weeks after reopening after swathes of students were hit by a ‘tripledemic’ of flu, Covid and strep throat outbreaks — meaning nearly a fifth signed off sick.
Meanwhile, there are growing concerns that damaging Covid policies could creep back into American life.
There is little evidence that face masks actually reduce infection rates, and mounting research shows the mandates stunted children’s social development and education.
Masks were blamed for the surge in flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and bacterial infection Strep A cases last year in minors because wearing face coverings and avoiding exposure to healthy germs prevented them from developing the natural immunity they would have otherwise gained.
Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12486965/Reinstate-MASKING-Covid-schools-Alabama-LA.html