Biden chief of staff: President wants schools open, but the US must ‘make the investments’ necessary to return safely

Biden chief of staff: President wants schools open, but the US must ‘make the investments’ necessary to return safely

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“I’ll give you a word: money,” Klain told CNN’s Erin Burnett when asked why he thought some public schools across the country are still closed in places where private schools are open. “That is why the President of the United States sent a plan to Congress, even before taking office, to make the necessary investments to make schools safe.”

Klain referred to a study published on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, in which researchers analyzed data from 17 K-12 schools in rural Wood County, Wisconsin, who did face-to-face learning at the last fall. They found Covid-19 case rates lower than in the wider community and few cases of transmission at school. Cohorts of 11 to 20 students of the same level of education met for classes and had lunch indoors, where students generally sat next to the same person.

“Students in very small groups, classes about 11 or 12 years old, distant, in a rural area – they can go to school safely, and the governors who made these investments,” said Klain, adding that “in other states , we didn’t ”didn’t see that kind of investment. ”

“President Biden has sent a plan to Congress that will ensure that most of our schools can be opened in 100 days,” he continued. “We need Congress to approve this plan so that we can do the kinds of things you need to do to make schools safe, for teachers to be safe, for students to be safe – unfortunately, it costs money.”

Klain also defended the Biden government’s ambitious goal of vaccinating 1 million people a day for its first 100 days in office, even after criticism from some observers who say the government is not being ambitious enough.

“We have been here for seven days, we have increased capacity more than ever. We are moving to the states faster with more certainty and clarity,” he said. “But there are only a few limitations to this process – the president was very honest, we are inheriting a system that was built with limited capacity.”

He added: “We are asking drug manufacturers to increase the speed, they can increase this. So we are increasing capacity, as you said, starting next week and the following week. We hope that capacity will be reduced further. in March. “

When pressed on Biden’s comments on Monday that he hopes the US will soon be able to vaccinate 1.5 million people a day – raising the standard by about 500,000 more daily vaccinations – and whether daily vaccinations could be increased further, Klain pointed to where the vaccine efforts had previously been.

“Our goal is to reach a million, 100 days out of 100 – no country in the history of the world has ever done this, it has never happened before, so that is a very ambitious goal,” he said. “Obviously, the president is pushing us to see if we can do better than that – we hope we can do better than that. But if we hit those 100 million shots in the first 100 days, it will be something that no one has ever done before.”

Klain added: “Nobody is going to limit the kicks, we will give as many kicks as many arms as we can. We believe that 100 million kicks in 100 days is an ambitious goal. If we can do better than that, of course we will.”

Lauren Mascarenhas and Zachary B. Wolf of CNN contributed to this report.

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