Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, agreed Wednesday that teachers should “absolutely” be prioritized among essential workers in vaccination efforts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines say that getting teachers vaccinated offers an “additional layer of protection” but that vaccinations for teachers shouldn’t be required for reopening in-person learning. Instead, the CDC’s guidelines for schools have emphasized social distancing and masking.
“You should try to get as many teachers as you possibly can vaccinated as quickly as you possibly can,” Fauci said. “But to make it a sine qua non that you don’t open a school until every teacher is vaccinated, I think is not workable, and probably most of the teachers would agree with that … You don’t want to essentially have nobody in school until all the teachers get vaccinated.”
Earlier this month, CDC director Rochelle Walensky echoed Fauci’s take that teachers don’t need to be vaccinated for reopening safely. After Walensky’s remarks, before the CDC’s guidelines were released, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Walensky was speaking “in her personal capacity.”
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