DENVER (KDVR) — If restaurants had double-masking requirements and screening, would the state loosen their restrictions? Schools get looser restrictions because they are under government control and can use tighter safety protocols, according to Gov. Jared Polis.
In a Friday press conference, Polis announced that many of Colorado’s counties and every county along the Front Range would move from Level Orange restrictions to Level Yellow restrictions beginning Feb. 6 at 9 a.m. Among other things, this gives restaurants a 50% capacity limit.
That 50% capacity is still less than grade schools, which are now mostly open to in-class learning.
Even after closing early last spring, delaying their start dates last fall, implementing hybrid and remote learning options for months, re-closing in-class learning as cases spiked in November, closing early for Christmas and opening late and hybridized in 2021, K-12 schools are still Colorado’s largest single source of COVID-19 outbreaks.
Despite this, schools have been highlighted by international and federal health officials as safe places compared to other location types. Polis echoed this line of reasoning, referring to schools as having more enforceable control methods.
“The COVID safety protocols around schools are very strong,” Polis said. “It’s a multi-layered approach with symptom screening, mask-wearing, distancing where possible, cohort isolation, and what that means is in nearly all cases those outbreaks have been contained at one or two or three kids unlike outbreaks at major industrial plants, meatpacking plants, where it goes to hundreds of people.”
The governor has a point about controls, if not numbers. Data Desk has explored these concepts before and found that schools do in fact have one of the smallest infections per outbreak average of any outbreak location type – that is, except for restaurants and bars and a handful of others.
Controls or not, schools together with childcare facilities make up almost a quarter of the state’s outbreaks since the new year.
This continues a historical trend.
Schools have been the largest source of outbreaks since last August. Even though they have only been truly open for half the pandemic’s lifespan, they have still become the single largest historical outbreak location, including healthcare facilities of any kind.
Thankfully, schools make up the lion’s share of a shrinking number of daily and weekly outbreaks. While still higher than last summer and even the pandemic’s beginning last spring, this year’s daily outbreaks are only a fraction of their November peaks.
