Dr. Anthony Fauci said “close the bars and keep the schools open” during a Sunday interview on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”
“Martha, that’s a good question. We get asked it all the time. We say it not being facetiously as a sound bite or anything, but you know, close the bars and keep the schools open is what we really say,” Fauci told ABC’s Martha Raddatz.
Fauci was specifically referring to how President-elect Joe Biden’s future administration can have a collective plan to reopen schools. Fauci also specifically referred to New York City schools closing in November.
“Obviously, you don’t have one size fits all, but as I said in the past, and as you accurately quoted me, the default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school,” Fauci said.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that the city’s public elementary school students will return on Dec.7 for partial in-person instruction, but middle and high schoolers must learn completely virtually for the time being, The New York Post reported.
Fauci said during the interview that reducing “the community level” virus transmission will “ensure the safety of the children in school.” (RELATED: ‘The Answer Is Absolutely’: Fauci Says He Would Join Biden’s COVID-19 Task Force)
“So, if you mitigate the things that you know are causing spread in a very, very profound way, in a robust way, if you bring that down, you will then indirectly and ultimately protect the children in the school because the community level is determined how things go across the board,” Fauci said.
“So my feeling would be the same thing. If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all, not like one would have suspected,” Fauci said.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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