A teacher at a California elementary school who was not vaccinated against Covid-19 has been responsible for at least 26 cases of contamination, including 18 students. The incident is in a study released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States’ leading federal public health agency. It shows the importance of vaccinating school staff, especially when students are too young to be vaccinated, the CDC points out. It also highlights the need for measures such as the correct wearing of a mask, in the context of the outbreak of the epidemic linked to the highly contagious Delta variant.
This teacher continued to work in May 2021 for two days after he began to experience symptoms, initially believing he had allergies. This teacher has repeatedly not worn a mask during readings to his class, despite recommendations in effect in Marin County, a suburb of San Francisco. The CDC does not say whether it is a man or a woman.
A total of 12 of his students contracted the disease, including 8 sitting in the front rows. Six students from another class were also infected, undoubtedly, underlines the study, because of “interactions within the school” between these two classes. All were under the age of 12 and therefore not eligible for vaccination. There are eight other cases among parents or siblings of the students. The classroom windows and doors were open, and the children wore masks. Sequencing of the virus indicated that these cases were due to the Delta variant. No hospitalization was required
The director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, regretted Friday during a press conference that “many schools” have chosen not to put in place measures such as the compulsory wearing of masks for all indoors. “Extensive quarantine measures and large numbers of cases usually occur in schools because they do not follow our recommendations,” she lamented. While many parents and officials worry when it comes time to start school in the country, she took as an example a second study published on Friday to hammer home the effectiveness of these recommendations.
According to research carried out in Los Angeles County, the most populous in the United States, the rate of infections among children and adolescents in class during the winter epidemic peak was 3.4 times lower than in the rest of the local population. County authorities are imposing a series of measures on schools, such as wearing a mask or respecting physical distancing.
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