Prioritizing teachers in distributing the Covid vaccine will continue to be a challenge until more doses are readily available, said Andy Slavitt, senior consultant to the Covid-19 Response Team at the White House, on Wednesday.
President Joe Biden has made reopening schools in the country for face-to-face education one of his top priorities.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines saying that teachers do not need to be vaccinated to reopen schools safely, but that states should give teachers priority access to Covid vaccines.
Slavitt said that governors have “difficult decisions” to make when juggling distributing vaccines to groups that include the elderly, nursing home workers and teachers.
“We try to support them with science as best we can, but until the scarcity is resolved we will still have these challenges,” Slavitt told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”.
The question of whether teachers should be vaccinated before returning to the classroom has been a critical point in the debate over the reopening of classroom teaching.
Vice President Kamala Harris said on the Today Show Wednesday morning, “Teachers should be a priority.”
During a meeting on Wednesday, the Covid-19 White House chief coordinator, Jeff Zients, said that while Biden and Harris believe that teachers and other front-line staff should be on the front line to receive vaccines, the two agree with the CDC that vaccinating teachers is “not a requirement for reopening schools.”
The CDC guidance also advises schools to align reopening plans with the severity of the outbreak in their communities. The agency also recommends that schools maintain “essential elements” for face-to-face learning, including wearing a mask, physical distance and monitoring dissemination in the surrounding area.
“If that were easy, it would be done,” Slavitt told CNBC. “We are focused on how to get children and teachers back to school – not if we should, but how. And that is what I think the CDC plan outlined.”