Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, agreed on Wednesday that teachers should be “absolutely” prioritized among essential workers in vaccination efforts. The guidelines of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention state that vaccinating teachers offers an “additional layer of protection”, but that vaccinating teachers should not be required to reopen face-to-face learning. Instead, the CDC’s school guidelines emphasize distance and social masking.
“You should try to vaccinate as many teachers as possible as soon as possible,” said Fauci. “But to make it sine qua non that you don’t open a school until all the teachers are vaccinated, I think it’s not feasible, and most teachers would probably agree with that … You don’t essentially want to have anyone at school until all teachers to be vaccinated. ”
Earlier this month, CDC director Rochelle Walensky echoed Fauci’s view that teachers do not need to be vaccinated to reopen safely. Following Walensky’s comments, before the CDC guidelines were released, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Walensky was speaking “in his personal capacity”.
CNN’s John Berman put pressure on Sanders on Wednesday morning.
“I don’t understand why it is a difficult question to answer. You may want all teachers to be vaccinated. The answer may be, yes, teachers should, if possible, be vaccinated before going back to school, but it is not necessary, ”said Berman after Sanders did not answer his question directly.
“The president was clear, the vice president was clear and I think I was very clear now. It is the administration’s position, the president and vice president believe that teachers should be prioritized for vaccination, ”replied Sanders.