The Marquette Area Public Schools Board of Education voted to have its Back to School Committee reconsider its recommendations for students returning to school following a presentation at the meeting by Dr. Bob Lorinser, medical director of the Marquette County Health Department. With many area schools opening their doors to students next week, Lorinser’s advice to the board is something they may want to consider.

In his presentation to the board regarding COVID-19, Lorinser said, “COVID will be with us for years — for years — and we need to learn how to live with it.”

He strongly urged certain protocols.

“Vaccines continue to be the best strategy we have to address the COVID pandemic at this time,” Lorinser said.

However, he cautioned that vaccines for 5- to 11-year-old children will not be available until November or December, according to the most recent estimates. He also said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated the risk of COVID to a child ages 5 to 17 is similar to influenza regarding hospitalizations and death.

“About one out of every 100,000 children that contract COVID will die from COVID,” Lorinser said.

He addressed the local surge in the Upper Peninsula and Marquette of the delta variant, which he noted that, according to multiple sources, is about three to four times as contagious as the flu.

“Our rates in Marquette have increased 15- to 20-fold over the last three weeks,” said Lorinser, who pointed out that it increased more than fourfold in the last week.

Masking, he said, reduces the transmission of COVID by 70%.

However, Lorinser said that for most K-12 quarantine policies in schools during the 2020-21 school year, the negative impact of quarantine on school operation and attendance was “substantial.”

So, Lorinser said MCHD is strongly considering a modified quarantine for asymptomatic students who are appropriately masked. Schools or classrooms with universal masking protocols could allow these students to stay in school with only school-based contacts without being quarantined, although they should be quarantined from school and community extracurricular activities.

Lorinser offered two recommendations to the MAPS school board.

“Our local schools and school boards should determine the level of risk to escalate or de-escalate (a) mitigation strategy, such as masking, in schools after discussing the facts and in consultation with the students, the parents, the school staff, the teachers, public health experts such as myself and others,” Lorinser said. “It is a community decision that we should listen to.”

He also recommended the MAPS board mandate universal masking for pre-K through sixth grade since no vaccine is currently available for that age group.

Lorinser urged the board to “highly” recommend universal masking for students above sixth grade.

The duration of these requirements, he said, depends on several factors.

“I recommend that this be reviewed monthly or when changes occur,” Lorinser said. “The decisions we make to start the school year should not determine the entirety of the school year.”

We agree with Lorinser. Many of our young people spent a good portion of their school year in 2020-21 learning from home. For kids who are just starting off in school, this is significantly detrimental to their social development, and another year of distanced learning will only make an eventual return to the classroom that much more difficult.

Parents should do all they can to help prevent a local outbreak of COVID-19, and that means sending their kids to school with masks until they are able to be vaccinated. It’s also important to note that, while about one out of every 100,000 children that contract COVID will die from it, there is absolutely no guarantee that your child will be one of the lucky ones.

We have made significant strides against this virus in the past year or so — but it’s important that we finish the race strong, and give our youngest residents a real chance to do the same.

— The Mining Journal, Marquette