The COVID Vaccine Goes to School

As health officials have scrambled to roll out the COVID-19 vaccine across the United States, they have managed to vaccinate the vast majority of school and childcare workers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 80 percent of teachers, school workers and childcare workers in the US have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

While the pandemic still rages on, this milestone may offer some hope that life could one day return to normal for school-age children, their parents and teachers.

“Our push to ensure that teachers, school staff, and childcare workers were vaccinated during March has paid off and paved the way for safer in-person learning,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky in a press release. “CDC will build on the success of this program and work with our partners to continue expanding our vaccination efforts, as we work to ensure confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.”

In March alone, more than 2 million childcare workers, school staff and teachers received the COVID-19 vaccine through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, the CDC noted. On top of that, between and 5 and 6 million people in these groups got the vaccine in March through vaccination programs run by their states.

At the time of publication, roughly 37 percent of the US population had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to The New York Times. And 23 percent of the total US population had been fully vaccinated.

Health experts estimate that between 70 and 90 percent of the US population will need to be vaccinated or build immunity through becoming sick for the country to reach "herd immunity." Herd immunity occurs when such a large portion of a population has immune resistance to a virus that the spread of that virus slows drastically or stops completely.

Health care providers around the country were administering more than 3.3 million vaccines each day at the time of publication, The New York Times reported.

If you have questions about the available COVID-19 vaccines or would like to receive one, reach out to your health care provider.