Prioritizing academics in Covid vaccine distribution will proceed to be a problem till extra doses are available, Andy Slavitt, senior advisor to t
Prioritizing academics in Covid vaccine distribution will proceed to be a problem till extra doses are available, Andy Slavitt, senior advisor to the White Home Covid-19 Response Group, mentioned Wednesday.
President Joe Biden has made reopening the nation’s faculties for in-person instruction considered one of his high priorities.
On Friday the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention launched new tips saying academics don’t have to be vaccinated to securely reopen faculties, however that states ought to give academics precedence entry to Covid vaccines.
Slavitt mentioned governors have “troublesome choices” to make in juggling vaccine distribution for teams together with seniors, nursing house employees and academics.
“We attempt to help them with the science the very best we are able to, however till the scarcity is resolved we’ll nonetheless have these challenges,” Slavitt instructed CNBC’s “The Information with Shepard Smith.”
The problem of whether or not academics ought to be vaccinated earlier than returning to the classroom has been a flashpoint within the debate relating to reopening in-person instruction.
Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned on the Right now Present Wednesday morning, “Academics ought to be a precedence.”
Throughout a Wednesday briefing, the White Home’s lead Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients mentioned that whereas Biden and Harris consider academics and different frontline employees ought to be on the entrance of the road to obtain vaccines, they each agree with the CDC that vaccinating academics is “not a requirement to reopening faculties.”
The CDC steerage additionally advises faculties to align reopening plans with the severity of outbreak of their communities. The company additionally recommends faculties preserve “important components” for in-person studying together with masks sporting, bodily distancing and monitoring unfold within the surrounding space.
“If this had been straightforward, it would be executed,” Slavitt instructed CNBC. “We’re centered on how we get children and academics again to high school — not whether or not we must always, however how. And that is what I believe the CDC plan laid out.”