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Bethlehem Area School District student-athletes who are unvaccinated against COVID-19 will likely have to don masks for winter sports this year.
Superintendent Joseph Roy said he and district health experts are leaning toward a two-tier masking policy for district athletes. Currently, Pennsylvania requires anyone in a school building over age 2 to wear a mask, regardless of vaccination status due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the current mask mandate order carves out an exception for students participating in sports outdoors or inside.
Roy and the district’s health team of St. Luke’s University Health Network and Bethlehem Health Bureau officials find this carve-out puzzling, the school leader told the Bethlehem Area School Board on Monday. He expects other Lehigh Valley school districts to wait for the state to mandate them.
“I don’t feel that is appropriate for us,” Roy said of waiting for the state to act. “How do you justify wearing masks all day long (in school) and then not for sports?”
The district is leaning toward a winter sports policy that would allow vaccinated athletes to skip wearing masks, while unvaccinated students must wear a mask and submit to weekly coronavirus testing, Roy said. Once the plan is settled, the school board would vote to add it into the district’s approved health and safety plan.
“I do anticipate we will get some pushback from some folks on that,” Roy said Monday night.
The district plans to opt into a free school coronavirus testing program made available by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration. The state Department of Health hired Boston-based Ginkgo Bioworks in July to administer the federally funded testing program, estimated to cost $87 million. But Spotlight PA found just 60 of the state’s 500 school districts had signed up by the end of September. Roy noted it has been tough to connect with the testing firm.
The idea is to focus testing on unvaccinated winter athletes who are playing indoors and in close quarters, Roy said, ideal scenarios for spreading the coronavirus. Outdoor fall sports have gone quite well with limited cases and many vaccinated athletes, he said.
“Going indoors the anxiety level of the medical experts goes sky high,” Roy explained.
About 40% of district high school students are vaccinated. Currently, children 12 and up are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination.
Fewer than 10 of the district’s more than 350 COVID-19 cases so far this school year were among fully vaccinated students, Roy noted. The majority of cases have been in the elementary schools, where no students are eligible for shots.
“Almost every case we have seen has been unvaccinated students,” Roy said. “The vaccines work.”
The superintendent continues to urge parents to speak with their pediatrician about vaccination and the district continues to host vaccine clinics. Beyond the protection from serious illness and hospitalizations, vaccines present another big advantage: Vaccinated students who are exposed to a positive student do not need to quarantine if they are symptom-free, Roy noted.
Bethlehem was averaging 12 new COVID-19 cases per day over the first 38 days of school. Over the last seven days, the average has dropped to five per day, Roy said Friday.
“It shows hopefully a longer term trend in the right direction,” he said.
Nationally, new coronavirus infections have fallen by 24% over the last two weeks with the nation averaging just shy of 90,000 a day over the last week. Pennsylvania’s case rate has plateaued with an average of 4,678 new cases a day over the last week, just about the same rate seen two weeks ago. The state is seeing 64 new deaths a day over the last week and 3,000 people hospitalized, both upticks from two weeks ago. Deaths and hospitalizations lag behind infection rates.
The Lehigh Valley is averaging 186 cases a day over the last week, a 12% decline from two weeks ago. Currently, 59% of Pennsylvanians and 70% of adults are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.
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