Dear Editor:
I am the mother of two children at Princeton Middle School and one at Littlebrook as well as an associate professor of epidemiology at Rutgers School of Public Health and director of the Epidemiology Concentration. My main research expertise is on environmental exposures in relation to children’s health, and during the pandemic, I have also pivoted to work on COVID-19-related issues including exposures among health care workers and increasing access to testing among vulnerable populations. I have published scientific papers on these topics and shared my expertise on local television, radio, and in publication. My husband, moreover, ran a COVID+ ICU at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital during the height of the pandemic in April 2020, so COVID-19 has truly permeated our personal and professional lives.
I would like to commend Princeton Public Schools for their commitment to getting children back to school in person and fully agree with the decision to try to return to as much normalcy as possible. At the same time, I am very concerned about the indoor lunch periods when eating outside is a totally reasonable option on all but the most inclement days. I can tell you that the epidemiology department is not holding any in-person events that include eating and we are all vaccinated adults. The thought of putting dozens or even hundreds of unvaccinated children in cafeterias to eat together without masks (even with 6-foot spacing) is a recipe for a super-spreader event that may result in infections as well as loss of learning due to quarantine.
I would like to encourage the schools to permit students to eat outdoors every day. We have an opportunity to vastly reduce the potential for transmission with relatively little burden or effort. While I understand there are reasons to stick with indoor lunch, I believe those logistical advantages to be vastly outweighed by the risk to our children and I know many other parents feel the same way.
Thank you for considering this request. I know that we all have the same ultimate end goal – to keep our kids happy and healthy through this stressful period- and I appreciate your partnership in these efforts.
Please feel free to get in touch with any comments or questions.
Best,
Emily Barrett
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September 13, 2021 at 06:00PM
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Students should be able to eat lunch outside every day due to COVID-19 - - Planet Princeton
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