PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Gov. Dan McKee as well as top state public health and education officials are urging eligible Rhode Island schoolchildren to get vaccinated against the coronavirus before the start of the school year.
The state Department of Health in conjunction with the Department of Education and community partners have coordinated more than 100 back-to-school and community-based COVID-19 clinics through mid-September, the Democratic governor said in a statement Tuesday.
Youth as young as age 12 are eligible to receive the Pfizer shot.
“Getting vaccinated and making sure that the eligible children, young adults, and adults in your life are vaccinated too is the single best thing you can do right now to protect yourself and your family from the delta variant, the more contagious strain of COVID-19,” Department of Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott said in a statement.
The more Rhode Island students who get vaccinated, the healthier Rhode Island will be and the fewer disruptions to in-person learning students and teachers will experience, officials said.
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SUPERINTENDENT MASK RECOMMENDATIONS
Rhode Island’s school superintendents are calling for consistency in school masking policies, which McKee has so far left up to individual districts. That has led to some tense school committee meetings as those for and those against masks make their cases.
“We’re such a small state, so our hope would be that we would end up with a state protocol that would apply to everybody rather than ending up with 36 different approaches to this,” Thomas DiPaola, executive director of the Rhode Island School Superintendents Association told WLNE-TV.
DiPaola says his organization follows medical expert advice and most of the advice they’ve gotten leans toward masks in the classroom.
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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH DATA
Three key metrics used by the state Department of Health to measure the spread of the coronavirus have risen in the past week.
The state’s percent positive rate has gone up from 3.3% to 3.6% as of Saturday, the department announced Tuesday.
The new hospital admissions by week has jumped to 108 for the week that ended Saturday, from 70 the previous week.
The new cases per 100,000 population has risen to 177 for the week that ended Saturday, from 146 the previous week.
The number of people who have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus in Rhode Island has climbed to more than 671,000.
