Doctors Back Up State’s Guidance for School Reopening
All over the world, temporal thermometers are part of the strategy for reopening economies from the COVID-19 pandemic.
But they will not do much good when it comes to reopening schoolhouse doors, Gov. Charlie Baker said on Thursday.
The commonwealth came very close to requiring daily temperature checks for students returning to school in the fall, but ultimately decided against the move because those checks would not yield any useful information, he said.
"The overwhelming message we got from the health care community was, with respect to kids, temperature checks will actually provide people with a lot of the wrong information with respect to the status of those kids when they show up to school, and that will create more problems than simply having a really aggressive program with respect to face coverings, hygiene, hand-washing and an appropriate management of the school building."
One of the most eye-catching parts of Thursday's memo from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education was its call for a minimum of 3-foot "social distancing" in schools, a departure from the now familiar 6-foot standard that Massachusetts residents have been hearing from state officials for months.
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