Transmission, even in New York City, is well below thresholds experts say are safe, but issues like adequate ventilation to combat aerosol spread of the virus remain.
New York State, the center of the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world four months ago, is now one of the few places in the country that may be able to safely reopen schools, several public health experts said after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo gave districts permission to do so. Mr. Cuomo announced Friday that public school districts across the state could hold in-person classes this fall, even as districts in many parts of the country where cases are still rising have abandoned the idea and will continue with remote learning. In interviews, doctors, epidemiologists and other public health experts said that conditions were favorable throughout the state, including New York City, to bring children back — as long as safety precautions are in place. Some expressed concern that the effects of keeping students home were more worrisome. As of Wednesday, fewer than 1 percent of Covid-19 tests statewide were positive, well below the 5 percent positivity threshold that both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have targeted as a safe standard for reopening schools. In New York City, the positivity rate is just slightly higher than the state average, with 1 percent of tests coming back with positive results. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said schools in the city would not open if the metric rises above 3 percent. A report last month from Harvard’s Global Health Institute also recommended opening schools only when the daily infection rate is less than 3 percent. “If there’s any city that should be opening in the entire country or at least trying to open, it should be New York City,” said Dr. Uché Blackstock, an urgent care physician in Brooklyn and founder of Advancing Health Equity, a health care advocacy group, who has children in the public schools. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, said reopening the schools in New York was a bit of a “social experiment” or “trial run,” but added that the odds of success were good. “New York’s chances of getting a good result, even though it is a densely populated metropolitan area, are actually better than in many rural areas, where they’re not nearly as serious about trying to control the virus,” he said. However another safety metric — the number of Covid-19 cases per capita — gives some reason for pause. The Harvard report characterized regions with 25 cases per 100,000 people as “red zones” requiring stay-at-home orders for “all learners.” New York, with 23 cases per 100,000 people statewide, was classified as an “orange zone” by this report, a status that the authors said should prioritize in-person education for elementary school and disabled children, followed by children in middle school.
