The city Education Department has ended most Covid restrictions for students, although teachers still have to be vaccinated.
Many teachers and families have been counting on the upcoming school year to bring a return to normalcy.
In New York City, as in many other parts of the country, the start of school on Sept. 8 may very well feel more like the days before the Covid-19 pandemic, as the school system rolls back restrictions, including an end to in-school PCR testing and the requirement that families fill out a daily health screening form.
The changes reflect the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s shift toward learning how to live with the virus, instead of allowing it to disrupt life. “We know that Covid-19 is here to stay,” Greta Massetti, a C.D.C. epidemiologist, said at a news briefing last week.
The new guidelines were posted on the Department of Education website a week after the C.D.C. loosened its own Covid-19 guidelines: The agency no longer recommends that people stay six feet away from others or that people who are exposed to Covid quarantine at home, although it recommends that they still wear a mask for 10 days.
After a wave earlier in the summer, coronavirus cases in New York City dropped 34 percent during the first two weeks of August, and hospitalizations decreased 22 percent over the same time period, according to The New York Times’s data dashboard.
But some pediatricians are concerned that the relaxing of Covid-19 restrictions in schools could lead to another surge.
“I think we are all expecting to see a lot more cases moving forward,” said Toni Eyssallenne, an internist and pediatrician for Strong Children’s Wellness, a Queens-based medical group.
Here’s the latest information about Covid-19 guidelines in the New York City public school system.
Will there be any vaccine mandates?
Will there be any mask mandates?
Will there still be a daily health questionnaire?
What happens if I have been exposed to Covid-19?
What will testing look like?
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