New York City closed schools and not restaurants or gyms: People who already got sick
New York City schools will be closed for the foreseeable future, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday.
De Blasio said the decision was based on a strict policy decided months ago that once the city’s rate of coronavirus transmission surpassed 3%, in-person classes would be suspended.
The move drew sharp criticism from infectious disease experts and epidemiologists, who questioned why the mayor had not followed his other strict rule: to shutter restaurants, bars, and gyms once the city’s transmission rate surpassed 2%.
“To me, the fact that gyms and bars and restaurants are open is unfortunate,” Dr. Preeti Malani, University of Michigan’s Chief Health Officer and a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, told Insider. Eating, drinking, and exercising are riskier than going to school, particularly because mask-wearing in the latter situations is more difficult, he said.
She called a 3% threshold “pretty modest” as a benchmark to warrant closing schools, especially considering that much of the country is dealing with rates in the double-digits. What’s more, the rate of transmission within New York City schools is much lower, at 0.17%, according to data cited by the New York Times, suggesting schools aren’t big transmission drivers of COVID-19.
“Schools have been one of the successes,” Malani said.
Throwing the towel in on that success isn’t only a blow for local parents and politicians. New York has the biggest school district in the country and the first major city to reopen schools in the pandemic. As such, it could have implications for schools across the country, which have looked to New York City’s seemingly successful COVID-19 strategy for guidance and inspiration.
Health experts reacted to De Blasio’s decision
The move to close schools comes six weeks after they started reopening, bringing 300,000 of the city’s 1.1 million students back into classrooms for face-to-face learning.
Now, they will be closed indefinitely.
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Health professionals reacted on social media, many questioning how city officials are interpreting statistics.
Epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo tweeted, “Test positivity should not be the sole metric for making high consequence decisions about opening or closing businesses or schools.”
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Amesh Adalja replied, tweeting, “Agree totally. The NYC schools decision was based on an arbitrary number and not reflective of transmission risk at school or the long term harm this decision will cause to children.”
The US Surgeon General, Jerome Adams, weighed in, echoing another common thread: that schools are not much cause for concern, if handled correctly.
Should people who’ve had COVID-19 get vaccines?
A medical staff member monitoring a patient who recovered from the coronavirus at a rehab center in Italy. Photo: Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images
Pfizer and Moderna this month announced positive results from their phase-three trials. Pfizer’s vaccine was found to be 95% effective in preventing COVID-19, while Moderna’s was found to be 94.5% effective. Experts now anticipate that Americans could have widespread access to a vaccine by the spring or summer.
But more than 10 million people in the US face a dilemma in whether to get these shots — and don’t know whether they’re eligible at all — since about 3% of the population has now survived the coronavirus.
“We want to look at vaccinating patients who have not been infected with COVID who are susceptible,” Todd Ellerin, the director of infectious diseases at South Shore Health in Massachusetts, told Business Insider. “The post-COVID patients are not going to be your first, second, third, or fourth tier of groups that you’re going to look at to want to vaccinate.”
There’s also a large group of people who got the virus but weren’t aware of it, either because they couldn’t get tested or because they were asymptomatic carriers. They’ll likely seek out a vaccine.
“Because of the lack of testing, there are many, many people who have had COVID-19 who don’t know it,” Natalie Lambert, an associate professor of medicine at Indiana University, told Business Insider. “We need to investigate some of these things, along with seeing how people who have not had COVID could be protected by a vaccine.”
How long does immunity last?
Immunity to the coronavirus is still one of the most critical, unsolved mysteries of the pandemic. An October study found that COVID-19 patients had a stable antibody response for at least five months. And though it’s still awaiting peer review, a recent study from Rockefeller University found that people had enough memory cells to fend off the virus for at least eight months. If memory cells wane slowly, immunity could last several years.
However, there have been several confirmed instances of people getting coronavirus infections twice. So people who were previously infected might eventually require a shot to boost their immune response.
“Survivors will likely need a booster at some point,” Ellerin said.
But it’s unwise to inoculate these people without more safety data, he added.
“We have to keep our eye on the prize right now,” Ellerin said. “Of course patients can get COVID more than once, so I’m not trying to tell you that they’ll be excluded from this down the road, but we have a lot more to learn.”
