The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday urged that K-12 schools be reopened and offered a comprehensive science-based plan for doing so speedily, an effort to resolve an urgent debate roiling in communities across the nation.
The new guidelines highlight the growing body of evidence that schools can openly safely if they put in effect layered mitigation measures. The agency said that even when students lived in communities with high transmission rates, elementary students could receive at least some in-person instruction safely.
And middle and high school students, the agency said, can attend school safely at most lower levels of community transmission â or even at higher levels, if schools put into effect weekly testing of staff and students to identify asymptomatic infections.