Boston doctors said while school mask mandates could be implemented again on a local level, they remain hopeful we won't have to return to statewide guidance.
It's been called "stealth omicron" or "deltacron." A new subvariant of the COVID-19 virus is making headlines, so we talked to NBC News medical correspondent Dr. John Torres to learn more. He explained how the variant "plagiarizes" from the Omicron and Delta variants that previously caused surges, and why this may not cause a new surge here in the U.S.
"I mean, you know, there have always been outbreaks in schools when they wore masks," Dr. Shira Doron of Tufts Medical Center said."It is expected one might see outbreaks in schools without masks. This virus is so interesting in its differential dispersion. You will have somebody in a classroom where no one gets infected and then someone in another classroom where everyone gets infected.
"I would think that definitely a trigger [for a return to masking] would be a new immune-invasive variant that is severe enough to put people in the hospital," she said."But you know, if you ask 100 experts you will get 100 different answers on exactly what should be the metric threshhold criterion to reinstitute a statewide school mask mandate."
"The key here is to be driven by data and make local decisions as much as possible instead of statewide," he said."One key thing we've learned over the last two years is the greatest imperative should be to keep schools open and keep students in classes. So unless it becomes a safety issue because there's inadequate staff or personnel to be able to run the school because they're out sick, then every effort should be made to keep the schools open.
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