Dr. Jose Romero, secretary of health for the Arkansas Health Department, said, “I expect to see, this year, significant outbreaks [of Covid-19] within the school system.”
“What's already telling me that that's going to happen are the number of daycare closures that have occurred because of outbreaks occurring, and the camp exposures and closures that are occurring,” he said at a US News and World Report event on vaccine inequity and misinformation on Tuesday.
“What I’m trying to do publicly and privately with my own patients is stress the importance of the mask," Romero added.
Some context: Arkansas is one of at least nine states that have banned districts from requiring masks in schools, according to CNN analysis. Romero said that “we’re considering, as an incentive for masking, considering our quarantine recommendations for school,” saying that if an individual has tested positive but the people exposed have been wearing a mask and are asymptomatic, they may not have to quarantine.
“We have one major children's hospital here in the state,” he said. “That hospital already has a significant number of children with Covid in their hospital, and they're being burdened by an upsurge in RSV – respiratory syncytial virus – being seen across the country, in particular, in the south.”
“What we're seeing now is that they're full, that they have a limited supply of beds. In three weeks when we start school, this will exacerbate, and that's what I'm very, very concerned about.”
According to the most recent data, just over 35% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated; nationally, nearly 49% of the total US population has been fully vaccinated.