WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - As the United States prepare for children to return to school after Labor Day, CDC has issued strong and detailed guidelines that should be implemented to promote children's safety in classrooms.
CDC recommends that everyone eligible for vaccination be vaccinated before school starts. Universal masking is critically important in schools for students, teachers, staff, and visitors, regardless of vaccination status, it notes.
CDC also recommends that schools employ additional key strategies in the campus to keep kids safe, including improved ventilation, physical distancing, and establishing screening programs for students and teachers.
Federal resources have been made available to help schools implement these recommendations.
As the Labor Day holiday weekend approaches, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky urged American families to remain safe over the long holiday weekend.
She noted rise in all COVID metrics. The seven-day average of cases is about 129,000 cases per day. The seven-day average of hospital admissions is about 11,500 cases per day, and the seven-day average of daily deaths has increased to 896 per day.
With 140704 new cases of coronavirus infections reporting in the United States on Tuesday, the national total has increased to 39,200,751, as per the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.
1398 additional casualties took the national COVID death toll to 640,121.
The number of people hospitalized due to coronavirus infection in the country has risen to 100,868, according to data compiled by New York Times.
A total of 31,020,612 people have so far recovered from the disease in the country.
As per the latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 174,121,529 people in the United States, or 52.4 percent of the population, have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The White House COVID-19 Response Team said that 350 EMTs, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare personnel have been providing emergency medical care on the ground in the Gulf states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to help those who have been impacted by Hurricane ida.
'At the same time, our whole-of-government effort to respond to help states with Delta outbreaks continues,' COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said at a briefing. COVID-19 Surge Response Teams are working with 18 states, pulling in personnel, resources, supplies, and expertise from across the federal government.
'In the month of August, we shipped more than 670,000 courses of therapeutic treatments; that's six times as many as we shipped in July,' Zients told reporters.
He said vaccinations have nearly doubled to an average of 900,000 vaccinations per day in August when compared to the previous month.
Currently, 800 colleges and universities, over 200 healthcare employers, small and large businesses across the country, and dozens of state and local governments and school districts have made vaccination requirements mandatory.
In Washington State, the weekly vaccination rate jumped 34 percent after the state announced vaccination requirements for state employees, teachers, and school staff, healthcare workers, and colleges and universities.
Businesses are seeing strong results. Notably, the share of job postings that require vaccinations is up 90 percent according to Indeed.com, a popular job search site.
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