By AMY CHO

We need to stop arguing about whether schools should reopen and instead do the work to reopen schools safely. Community prevalence of COVID-19 infection helps to quantify risk, but reopening decisions should not be predicated on this alone. Instead of deciding reopening has failed when an infected student or teacher comes to school, we should judge efforts by our success in breaking transmission chains between those who come to school infected and those who don’t. We should judge our success by when we prevent another outbreak. We should pursue risk and harm reduction by layering interventions to make overall risk of transmission in schools negligible. This CAN be done, as healthcare workers all over the United States have shown us. Unlike politics, we should avoid thinking this is a binary choice between two polarized options. At the heart of these decisions about tradeoffs should be the assumption that the education of our children is an essential, public good.

I advocated for school closures in March. We had little understanding of the risks and transmission of COVID-19 and faced massive shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). The closures were a blunt force instrument but bought precious time to learn and prepare. Pandemic control, by flattening the curve and buying time for discovery of more effective therapeutics, care and a vaccine, remains a critical tool to save lives. But COVID-19 will not be eradicated. We must come to terms with the reality that COVID-19 will circulate among us, likely indefinitely. Shutdowns slow spread but at a great cost, disproportionately paid by vulnerable groups including children, women, minorities, and those with the least financial resources. Getting children safely back to in-person school should be among our highest priorities.

Hospitals never considered closing. As healthcare workers, we cannot physically distance from patients. We watched in horror as hot spots like Bergamo suffered high nosocomial and staff infection rates as they were quickly overwhelmed. In response, we worked tirelessly and collaboratively to protect one another while continuing to provide care.

The good news is that we seem to have learned how to prevent in-hospital transmission of COVID-19. A recent study showed that at a large US academic medical center, after implementation of a comprehensive infection control policy, 697 of 9,149 admitted patients were diagnosed with COVID-19. But only TWO hospital-acquired patient infections were detected. COVID-19 is not “just the flu,” but it isn’t Ebola either. I no longer worry that I will become infected with COVID while working in my emergency department. It is not easy, comfortable nor cheap, but a bundle of universal masking and eye protection, appropriate PPE use, sanitation, improved room ventilation, and protective policies have proven effective at preventing in-hospital outbreaks.