As children in Boston return to school, the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) has some tips to stay safe and healthy. In mid-August, BPHC noted that COVID-19-related hospitalizations in the city were low but that the average level of COVID-19 particles in Boston’s wastewater was increasing. This trend has continued over the last few weeks. With the cold and flu season approaching as well, preparation is key to illness prevention.
BPHC “strongly recommends that all families stay up to date with their vaccines for COVID-19, flu, and other diseases, such as pertussis, measles, and varicella.” They also recommend that everyone aged 6 months and older get their annual flu shot in September or October. Other preparation measures include having COVID-19 rapid testing kits available at home, wearing a face mask (especially if you are at high risk of severe illness), washing your hands regularly, and disinfecting and cleaning high-touch surfaces. These are steps that all families with children can take to reduce the risk of infection over the next few months.
COVID-19 continues to mutate, with new variants spreading and caseloads expected to peak during the fall and winter. A lingering question on plenty of minds these days is when to get a new COVID booster, or whether we even should. There are good reasons for waiting a couple of months to get vaccinated. The first reason is that Pfizer and Moderna are currently working on a new booster targeting the most recent and dominant variants of COVID in the country. Waiting for this booster will increase your chances of being immunized against the variants that are currently circulating. The second reason is that getting boosted later in the fall will coincide with the timeframe during which cases are expected to peak.
Age, health status, and recency of COVID infection may also play a factor in the decision to get boosted. Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who sits on the FDA’s vaccine advisory group, opposes the broad recommendation that everyone get boosted. He advises elderly and immunocompromised people to get vaccinated, but is skeptical that vaccinating young, healthy people will have much of an impact. In an interview with the journal Science, Offit said “it comes down to the data…if [the CDC is] going to make that broad recommendation, show me why that is.” As always, you should consult with your doctor if you have questions about the vaccines.
Parents may be anxious about their children returning to school at a time of new COVID variants, but there is generally good news about the virus. WGBH reports that the number of patients with severe COVID-19 at Tufts Medicine in Boston has remained in the single digits since May. People’s immune systems are better equipped to handle infection, and there are fewer severe illnesses or deaths. The situation is drastically different from the early days of the pandemic.
Indeed, parents should perhaps be more concerned with the effects of absenteeism than with COVID or the flu. Over the past four years, chronic absenteeism in the US (defined as missing 10% of a school year) has doubled from its rate in 2018-2019. Nearly every state has seen increases, with Alaska reporting the most extreme rate: nearly half of all pupils in the state missed enough school to be counted as chronic absenteeism. Massachusetts has released data for the 2022-2023 school year, and the results are hardly encouraging – the rate hovers around 20%, whereas during the 2018-2019 school year the rate was 10%.
In an interview with the New York Times, Hedy Chang, the executive director of Attendance Works, a national organization promoting solutions to chronic absenteeism, said that parents and children must balance the dangers of illness with the dangers of missing school. “We actually have to shift norms again, to being judicious and thoughtful about when we keep kids home, and only keeping them home if we think it’s truly a problem,” she said.
The dominant opinion among most scientists and public health officials, after all, is that COVID is not going away. Lockdowns and school shutdowns will not eradicate the virus for good, so we must engage in preparatory and preventative measures while acknowledging that COVID will stick around. Students need to be in school, not only for learning but also for the social and emotional growth that occurs in the school environment. The Boston Public Health Commission’s recommendations are part of the plan to ensure that the learning losses and mental health issues that have affected our young population during the pandemic can be avoided for the next school year.