Medical experts weigh in on continued COVID-19 school measures: 'There is no place for universal mandates'

Medical experts weighed in on the advancement of school COVID-19 mask mandates and other pandemic-related measures for the upcoming academic year, at odds over whether the science makes sense. 

Several schools have surprised parents with announcements that they'll keep pandemic-related policies in place in the case of high transmission rates. The BA.5 Omicron subvariant of the virus is surging, but current vaccines continue to offer protection against hospitalization for severe disease and death.

The Desoto, Texas, school district said its mask requirement will remain for the 2022-2023 school year because of the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Dallas County. DeSoto ISD said it won a lawsuit allowing them to enforce the use of masks despite Gov. Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates in school. 

"The district will continue to require masks to be worn at all schools, sites, activities when the community level in Milwaukee County is rated in the High category as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)," Milwaukee Public Schools recently wrote.  

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The Fairfax County School Board in Virginia sparked a firestorm by making a similar announcement in a recent email to the school community. 

"FCPS requires all students to wear a face covering when indoors (except while actively eating/drinking) on school property (to include the buildings, school buses and other school provided vehicles) when the CDC COVID-19 Community Level for Fairfax County is high," the email read. "The current level for Fairfax County is medium. The Code of Virginia allows parents/legal guardians to elect for their child not to wear a face covering while on school property."

"Parents have been left discouraged, angered and confused by this fear mongering and charade," Elizabeth McCauley of the Virginia Mavens told Fox News Digital. 

Frustrated parents have the backing of experts who say the time for mandates has long expired.

"Children continue to be the most vulnerable to harsh Covid restrictions," Fox News medical contributor Nicole Saphier told Fox News Digital. "The CDC has begun moving towards risk-based recommendations yet they are not speaking out when mask and vaccine mandates are still being instituted. Adults are able to congregate in bars, concerts, airplanes and other settings without masks yet kids, who have proven over and over again to be the lowest risk for severe Covid and over 90% of which have already had Covid, are being forced to mask up."    

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Saphier suggested a better path forward - one she said won't add to the physical and mental stress already caused by mandated mask wearing.

"They are told to mask-up despite zero reputable data demonstrating clinical benefit of cloth mask wearing in the lowest risk population, most of whom have natural immunity," she continued. "What we do know is that mask wearing can have consequences, physical and emotional. Schools need to move towards risk base mitigation measures and stop enforcing universal mandates. Higher (sic) risk staff and children and really anyone who wants to should be allowed to wear a facemask, however, no one should be forced to. Another asinine policy kids are dealing with is requiring boosters for college students to return in the fall. There is no place for universal mandates, vaccines and masks, at this point of the pandemic." 

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But health experts like Dr. Gabrielle Virgo, a Silver Spring, Md., pediatrician, "strongly believe" in continued masking.

"I strongly believe in masking," Virgo told the Washington Post. "We have to be realistic. We will see another new variant. This won’t be the end of it. We’re not at the point where it’s acceptable for everybody to be taking off their masks. I tell parents: Be prepared."

Julia Raifman, an assistant professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University, says there's enough evidence to suggest the masking has helped reduce COVID rates.

"We see that each layer of COVID mitigation helps but that none is sufficient to control COVID transmission on its own, especially in surges," Raifman told Fox News Digital. "There are several studies indicating mask mandates are associated with reduced COVID transmission, as well as the logic that COVID spreads through the air and that universal mask policies help people with COVID wear masks and reduce spread.  

"I think we have been on a policy pendulum where we had business and school closures at first while we learned more about the virus but then we overswung the other direction, to the point where we have no mitigation. COVID remains harmful to health, education, and the economy, mask mandates remain one of the most impactful mitigation strategies, and we should be prepared to use mask mandates to reduce the harms of new surges," she added. 

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Stanford Medical School Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya challenged the belief that mask wearing slows the spread of the virus.

"My position is that there is no high quality evidence such as a randomized trial that supports the notion that child masking slows the spread of Covid," he told Fox News Digital. "The experience of Sweden and other European countries shows that schools can operate normally without mask mandates without placing teachers at any elevated risk relative to them relative to other workers in the community." 

Dr. LeRoy Essig, a pulmonary disease doctor at OhioHealth Physician Group in Columbus, Ohio, also advocated against facial coverings, telling Fox News Digital that kids who are learning to speak need to see facial expressions to help in their emotional development as they're learning to form words and sounds. Masked children, he said, also have a hard time seeing their classmates' facial expressions, which he said can cause "emotional segregration."

Some schools have pushed for better ventilation systems to improve air quality, an upgrade that could in some cases delay the return to in-person learning. Bhattacharya argued against that route and was adamant that children deserve a "normal school year."

"There are many long term physical and psychological harms to children from not resuming school unburdened by such non-pharmaceutical interventions, especially now that such a large portion of the population has immunity either from recovery from prior covid infection, the vaccine or both," he said. "Ventilation (sic) upgrades may be useful in some schools, but should not be used a pretext to delay the return to normal schooling. All children deserve a normal school year and covid should not be used as a reason to not provide that for American kids." 

"This year, my personal take on it is that certainly kids should be in school," Essig agreed. "I think it's been pretty well established that, trying to do remote learning the quality of education is not up to par. The truancy rates are greater. And many kids obviously don't have the same accountability at home as when they're in school. So they certainly should be in school."