What to know about kids returning to school amid the Delta variant's spread

Dr. Sara Moran Bode, Council Chairperson-elect for the AAP Council on School Health, tells Yahoo Finance what she's recommending to schools about masking, vaccinations and other protocols headed into the school year.

Video Transcript

- Patient, Dr. Bode, from your perspective, I think, so many parents who are getting ready to send their kids back to school over the next couple of weeks are very confused. They don't know what's safe and what's unsafe at this point, just in terms of what they should be doing to best protect their children. So what's your advice?

SARA MORAN BODE: Yeah, great question. Thank you. One of the things we know is that, first, we want to prioritize getting kids back into school. It was really challenging for kids to have online learning last year. It was not ideal for academics, for social, emotional learning. But the other thing we know is that when kids did go back to in-person school, and schools used those safety measures, they worked.

So when kids all wear masks and that's universal, with the hand washing, good ventilation, we can get kids back into school and have it be safe. So as a parent, I think it is really important to understand, what is your school district planning to do to help promote those safety precautions, and what are they putting in place to keep your child safe from COVID?

AARTHI SWAMINATHAN: Doctor, we've seen a lot of cases of children contracting COVID, right? So what do we know about the Delta variant, how is it different, and why was the first instance in COVID not as in fact impactful as the variant, right? Lots of questions, can you help us a little bit about that.

SARA MORAN BODE: Yes, absolutely. So the Delta variant has been the predominant variant that we've seen recently. And as COVID has progressed, we've learned a lot over time. And what we know is, just like in adults and kids, this Delta variant is just more infectious, so meaning it's easier to pass from child to child or child to parent and adult. And so it's concerning to us that we're having kids back in school without any of those other protections in place.

We also know that, as many of our older adults got vaccinated and that vaccine rate is high, our kids aren't vaccinated. So as we're seeing COVID trend, we're seeing more cases in kids. A higher percentage of everyone with COVID is young adults and kids now. And so this is a concerning trend we want to watch, and make sure we're protecting our kids until they can get vaccinated.

AARTHI SWAMINATHAN: So what do you make of all these states, like Florida, basically telling it's up to the school district, to some of them saying, no, schools can't even mask their children. So it's just a really difficult decision that parents have to make. So how do you reckon with this, and do you think these southern states will ever follow CDC guidance?

SARA MORAN BODE: So I think it is really unfortunate, both for school districts and for parents as well, because we put school districts in tough positions when we, number one, don't support them with these safety measures. This worked last year. Students went to school. They wore their masks. We had good compliance with this, and we know that it was effective.

And so, I think if you're a parent living in a community, it's important for you to have a voice. And so you should be contacting your school district to make your thoughts and opinions known. We know that masking works, when everybody wears the mask. So setting those expectations and making it normative for students, that everyone should be wearing a mask, that that's just the expectation when they get on the bus, when they get into the classroom, will go a long way towards not only getting kids back to school, but keeping them there, not having another outbreak.

So for all these school districts, you know, one of the things they need to consider is if they don't put these mandates into place, and then people aren't masking their students, then they may end up in an unfortunate situation where they're all back to virtual learning again, as they get outbreaks within those classroom settings.

- Doctor, I was reading that, I think it's the Shelby County school system in Tennessee, invested greatly in refurbishing their ventilation systems. And I think they discarded those plastic barriers, which really, I'm told by different doctors, don't do much of anything. What questions are you getting at the council from school systems. Do they involve ventilation? Do they involve other issues?

SARA MORAN BODE: All of it. So when we look at school districts and help support them, there's so many different measures that can be helpful. So one of them is just the setup of the school, right? So if you know you're in a high risk situation, like take lunchtime, for example, when no one's wearing a mask, because they're eating, then what can you do to maximize both the ventilation and the physical spacing during that time?

How about those high touch surfaces like lockers and the flow of hallways. We work with school districts extensively at the Academy of Pediatrics and even the CDC, to help them navigate all of those different situations, and many schools have certain specific setups. Some can afford to upgrade ventilation in one way, others are being creative and using a lot of outdoor spaces to help, again, with that natural air flow.

- Doctor, I think all of this brings up the question about vaccinating our kids, and what that timeline looks like, and what it should look like at this point, since the Delta variant seems to be such a threat to our children. What do you make of the timeline, I guess, at this point, and do you think maybe we should think about vaccinating our children under the age of 12, maybe a little bit sooner than we had initially planned?

SARA MORAN BODE: So I think, you know, the FDA is really going to go ahead and follow their typical process for this. We always say that kids are not little adults, so those studies have not been rushed. They've been done very well and thoughtfully. Pfizer in particular has had great studies initially, and now all of the other vaccines following through on kids. So I think it is coming quickly.

And I also do think we know that if we put these safety measures in place, they work. So until that vaccine becomes available to all of our kids under age 12, we can get them back to in-person learning if we follow these measures. So I think we're not going to rush it. We're going to study it just like we do everything else. We're going to make sure these vaccines are safe in kids. And we'll go through and authorize those as quickly as possible.

AARTHI SWAMINATHAN: Doctor, returning to some of the cases that we've already seen, what do we know about the symptoms of COVID of the Delta and the Lambda variant in kids?

SARA MORAN BODE: So we're seeing similar symptoms that we did in previous variants, as well. So this can be confusing in the wintertime especially, but even now, as kids get back to school, because COVID symptoms in kids can look like a lot of other viruses that we see. So you can have mild cold symptoms, you could even then progress to have more symptoms that look more typical of a pneumonia, and even some kids, in rare cases, do get hospitalized and need that sufficient respiratory support as well.

So one of the things that we really talk about is that, in addition to having these safety measures in place, you have to have a process for quick identification and testing. So if you do have a child that has a fever and some cold-like symptoms, it's really important to get them seen quickly, to have a COVID test to identify, is this COVID or is it something else, one of the other rhinoviruses or enteroviruses that we see this time of year.

- Doctor, I realize the children born in the last six months since the vaccine regimens have started rolling out are not school age eligible. Do we know anything about their immune response, since their mothers might have had vaccine while they were in utero?

SARA MORAN BODE: I think that's to be determined yet. I don't think we have definitive evidence either way. But the more that we can get people vaccinated across the community, and there is often passive immunity then that can go around in your community, the better we can protect these young ones from COVID. So, again, I think it's still critically important for all of the adults to get vaccinated and do their part to, again, help protect these kids that can't get the vaccine yet.

- Dr. Bode, great to speak with you. Dr. Sara Moran Bode of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health and, of course, our thanks to Aarthi Swaminathan as well.