Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky anticipates that all schools will be fully in person and no longer remote in September 2021.
“We should anticipate, come September 2021, that schools should be full-fledged in person and all of our children back in the classroom,” the CDC director told ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton during an Instagram Live conversation on ABC News.
She said that parents and teachers should anticipate this regardless of whether children are vaccinated or not. “We can vaccinate teachers, we can test, there’s so much we can do,” she said.
Asked when she expects children will become eligible to get vaccinated, Walensky said by mid-May. Pfizer recently released promising data indicating its vaccine is safe and effective for children ages 12 to 15.
“Mid-May maybe we’ll be able to have a vaccine from Pfizer that we’ll be able to do down to 12,” she said, pending Food and Drug Administration authorization for that age group.
She expects Moderna will soon follow Pfizer because those studies are currently underway. She said she is hopeful that by summertime there will be two vaccines available for children 12 and up. Johnson and Johnson Is expected to start their pediatric trials in the months ahead.
Walensky doesn’t anticipate the vaccine will be authorized for children younger than 12 before the end of the year.
Walensky’s comments came shortly after she said during a White House briefing that the more contagious variant of coronavirus that originated in the U.K., the B.1.1.7 variant, has become the dominant strain in the U.S.
All three vaccines authorized in the U.S. — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — are believed to work well even against the U.K. variant.
Walensky stressed that the multiple COVID variants are serving to reinforce her goal of wanting a large portion of the U.S. population to get vaccinated.
“My goal is to have people want to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated,” she said.
Watch The Full Interview below:
