Citing an “overwhelming” number of cases and a desire to protect children’s health and safely keep schools open, Doylestown Health executives called on the Central Bucks School District board of directors to reconsider its COVID-19 response plan.
In a recent letter to the nine-member board, the health care system’s CEO, James Brexler, and its Chief Medical Officer Dr. Scott Levy, said keeping actively infected children home for at least five days is advisable.
“The data is clear that children exposed to Covid are readily infected, as are adults,” stated the letter. And while illness from the Omicron variant is often quite mild or asymptomatic for some, infected children can transmit the highly contagious virus to others, including those likely to suffer more severe illness, the health care leaders wrote.
“I would strongly encourage the Central Bucks schools to take reasonable steps to assure that transmission of virus within the schools is mitigated, and that actively infected children do not return to class until there is reasonable likelihood that the individual is no longer actively infected and thus likely to infect others,” the letter said.
Brexler and Levy applauded the school district’s ongoing efforts to provide an “exemplary education,” noting that mission also includes teaching the “concept and importance of civic and community responsibility.”
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