Daily US Times: State leaders around the United States are increasingly pushing for schools to reopen this winter — pressuring them, even — as teachers begin to get Covid vaccine.
The Governor in Ohio offered to give coronavirus vaccines to teachers at the start of February, provided their school districts agree to resume at least some in-person instruction by March 1.
In Arizona, where teachers began receiving the vaccines this week, the governor warned schools that he expects students back in schools despite objections from top education officials and the highest coronavirus diagnosis rate in the nation over the past week.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey said: “We will not be funding empty seats or allowing schools to remain in a perpetual state of closure”
“Children still need to learn, even in a pandemic,” the governor added.
Leaders of Arizona’s major hospitals disagreed with the governor’s position, noting at a news conference on Wednesday that the state is teetering on the brink of having to ration life-saving care.
Dr. Michael White of Valleywise Health said: “We understand that learning and bringing our children together is very important.”
He said at this time with uncontrolled spread of the Covid-19, we need to do things that we know will reduce the chance that coronavirus will spread and that is not gathering with people we don’t live with.
The United States recorded an all-time, one-day high of 4,327 deaths on Tuesday, Johns Hopkins University data shows. The country’s overall death toll from the pandemic has topped 380,000, closing in fast on the number of Americans killed in World War II.
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