‘Close the Bars and Keep the Schools Open’: Fauci Outlines Plan to Minimize Covid Spread, Allow School Reopenings

Dr. Anthony Fauci called for the country to reduce the spread of the coronavirus so as to get children back in school while maintaining public safety.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director spoke to ABC’s Martha Raddatz on This Week while his colleagues went on the other Sunday shows to warn about the pandemic concerns the country is likely to see after Thanksgiving. When Raddatz brought up Fauci’s support for sending children back to school, she asked him “how do you make that happen and how do you advise the incoming Biden administration on getting a unified response?”

Fauci responded by reiterating his position “close the bars and keep the schools open.” While he acknowledged that there’s no “one size fits all” solution for this, he said “the default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep children in school, to get them back to school.”

The best way to ensure the safety of the children in school is to get the community level of spread low. So, if you mitigate the things that you know are causing spread in a very, very profound way, in a robust way. If you bring that down, you will then indirectly and ultimately protect the children in the school because the community level is determined how things go across the board. My feeling would be the same thing. If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all, not like one would have suspected. Let’s try to get the kids back, but let’s try to mitigate the things that maintain and just push the kind of community spread that we’re trying to avoid.

Fauci concluded by saying schools don’t drive community spread nearly as much as restaurants and places where indoor-seated gatherings without masks are allowed.

Hours after Fauci’s appearance, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that schools will soon reopen for younger students, in reversal of his most recent decisions pertaining to Covid.

BREAKING: NYC public elementary schools to reopen next week for in-person learning

— Rebecca Jarvis (@RebeccaJarvis) November 29, 2020

JUST IN: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced elementary schools will be reopening in-person on Monday, Dec. 7, in a reversal from a previous decision. https://t.co/jDqHzKJrd5

— ABC News (@ABC) November 29, 2020

Watch above, via ABC.