麻豆传媒

White House officials, led by Vice President Mike Pence, promised on Wednesday that would get a facelift following an angry Twitter storm earlier in the day from President Trump.

The president tweeted that he for reopening schools and warned that he could cut off funding if schools do not reopen.

On Tuesday, during a roundtable with teachers and other stakeholders, Trump said he would "put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools" this fall.

Pence said the administration is determined to "work in partnership with our states" providing them the guidance that will help them to safely reopen.

"We're here to help. We don't want federal guidance to be a substitute for state and local laws and rules and guidance," he said.

He said the administration is prepared to "sit down with state officials and to work through their plan."

Pence also said the CDC will be issuing new guidance documents next week providing "all new tools" to schools. However, how the current guidance -- in which the more expensive recommendations are qualified by "if feasible" -- will be revised remained unspecified.

CDC Director Robert Redfield, MD, said, "Remember, it's guidance, it's not requirements."

Redfield said he would be personally disappointed "if we saw that individuals were using these guidelines as a rationale for not reopening our schools."

Pence noted that education officials and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), with whom he met on Tuesday, also agree with the sentiment that it's "absolutely essential that we get our kids back into classroom, for in-person learning."

He stressed that the concerns for children are not only academic but that stakeholders are worried about children's mental health, their nutrition, and loss of access to other services that schools provide. Programs for children with special needs and mental health issues may be particularly dependent on personal interaction.

The CDC's guidance was last updated on May 19. In late June, the AAP published its own . It urged that "all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school."

One argument for children returning to schools is that, apart from those with underlying conditions, children don't appear to be as susceptible to the virus as adults are, Pence said.

"[W]e know that the risk of serious illness to children is very low," Pence said, "and there are measures we can put into place to ensure we don't see the spread of the virus or outbreaks in individual schools."

Such measures include having children remain in a single classroom throughout the day or learn outside "as often as possible."

Deborah Birx, MD, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said that current infection data are "skewed" to people with symptoms and to adults, and thus aren't reliably informative about children's risk. Those younger than 10 are the least tested demographic, she noted.

"And so we are looking very closely into that category by using our antibody test," Birx said.

Birx also said that the mortality rate for individuals under 25 is less than 0.1%.

"But until we know how many have been infected, we have no evidence that there is significant mortality in children without co-existing diseases," she said. And that is what will be studied "in deep detail," she said.

Regarding funding for schools to help them reopen safely -- installing new ventilation, for example -- Pence said there has been discussion about "additional potential support," but Congress is currently on recess. He also pointed out that $13.3 billion has already been appropriated for schools in the , of which only 1.5% has been "drawn down" by states.

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