HOUSTON — A new CDC study finds teachers may be bigger COVID-19 spreaders in schools than students.
"It was the week after Spring Break is when I started feeling bad,” said Houston ISD teacher Rennette Brown about her COVID-19 experience.
She remains thankful she’s been able to return to work because, at one point, she wasn’t so sure.
"I really thought that this was it," Brown said. "I had been watching the news, and every time I looked around, someone who was overweight, who’s black, female, diabetic, high blood pressure was dying. And I was like, 'That's me.'"
Brown still doesn’t know where she may have contracted COVID-19, but she always thought students posed a potential risk at school.
However, according to a new CDC study, teachers may cause more cases. Nine COVID-19 clusters were examined at a school district in Georgia. In only one of the nine was a student clearly the first documented case. The other eight involved probable teacher-to-student transmission.
Texas is one of the states that decided not to include teachers in phases 1A or 1B of vaccine distribution. That's something for which many educators have argued for the past few months.
The Texas American Federation of Teachers and others consider the new study further evidence that all teachers should be among the first with access to COVID vaccines.
“I think teachers should be in the frontline to go ahead and receive the vaccine," Brown said. "If they do so choose to take it.”
Meanwhile, she believes cleaning and other protocols, including limited in-person meetings among teachers, greatly mitigate the risk no matter what a study might say.
Here's a link to the CDC study:
