As we approach the one-year anniversary of the pandemic hitting our area, news related to the coronavirus comes to us quickly. A lot of that has been good lately.
The race to put more vaccines in Americans’ arms remains a top priority for President Biden and his government. He announced that there should be enough supply to vaccinate all adults in the United States by the end of May.
Even two pharmaceutical rivals are working together to streamline the vaccine. Merck is assisting Johnson & Johnson in the production of its one-shot vaccine.
However, not all the news was positive. For some reason, leaders in some states and cities – mainly in Texas – have decided that it is okay to relax the masks’ mandates. This goes against the advice of specialist doctors, who still recommend that we wear a mask and practice social detachment.
South Carolina has never had a masking mandate across the state, but several counties – including Aiken – have enacted decrees requiring them to be used. SC Governor Henry McMaster also dismissed mandates that required bars to cut alcohol sales at 11 pm and the requirement for prior approval at large meetings.
We are not yet out of danger – South Carolina is still listed as in an active outbreak by the data tracking website CovidActNow.com – but increasing vaccine availability should help.
Closer to home, the Aiken County Public School District returned to five days of classroom instruction last week. McMaster also announced the state’s plan to offer the COVID-19 vaccine for phase 1b beginning March 8.
This group now includes school staff, and the local school district announced that it was partnering with Rural Health Services to offer vaccination appointments during the month of March. This is great news for Aiken County schools.
The battle to get students back into the classroom while eligible Americans line up for vaccines has been going on for the past two months. The subplot of this drama was that many teachers did not fall for the first wave of those who received the vaccine.
State Senator Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, has been particularly vocal about the return of students to classrooms and the vaccination of teachers. He is the majority leader in the Senate and a potential candidate for governor, against McMaster, in 2022.
Massey has been a strong supporter of the return to face-to-face education. The governor, for his part, hesitated to put teachers ahead of the state’s elderly population for vaccination.
“Nearly half of SC schools do not offer 5-day face-to-face instruction,” wrote Massey last month on Twitter. “If we don’t offer the vaccine to teachers now, the children in these schools will suffer. And many of them will not recover. “
South Carolina’s challenge of educating students is well documented, and the coronavirus has not done our children any favors. In addition to the lack of face-to-face instruction, the lack of access to broadband in rural areas has been another obstacle.
It may take several years for us to know all the effects of the pandemic on our educational system. But getting teachers to be vaccinated and students safely back to the classroom seems to be worthy goals.
It is better late than never.