During his Nov. 18 coronavirus briefing, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said that a majority of COVID-19 cases in the Garden State’s public schools were “linked to out-of-school activities.”
In her analysis of in-school infection data from across the country, Brown University economics professor Emily Oster has reached a similar conclusion.
“I don’t think anyone would claim that no one has gotten COVID at a school. That would be unrealistic,” she said in a story by Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth. “But in most of the cases we are seeing among people who are affiliated with schools, the actual case was not acquired at a school.”
Regardless of where coronavirus transmission may have occurred, the deaths of educators in America due to the coronavirus “have forced school boards to make hard decisions of whether to keep classrooms open and have left students and staff members grief-stricken,” writes Hollingsworth, whose AP story includes comments from AFT President Randi Weingarten.