President Joe Biden made clear Tuesday his goal is for the majority of K-8 public schools to be open “five days a week” by the end of his first 100 days after the White House received criticism for scaling back that goal last week.
“I think that we’ll be close to that by the end of the first 100 days,” Biden said during a CNN town hall in Milwaukee. “You’ll have a significant percentage of them being able to be open.”
Frustrating many parents and opening a new line of attack for Republicans, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week Biden’s goal is for more than 50% of schools to have “some teaching” in person “at least one day a week” – not necessarily fully reopened – by Day 100 of his presidency.
But Biden said that statement was inaccurate, recommitting to a goal of having most K-8 schools fully open.
Asked how he would return students to classrooms, Biden said, “We should be vaccinating teachers.
He also said that “by next Christmas I think we’ll be in a very different circumstance [in terms of normalcy] than we are today.”
And, he added, “A year from now, I think that there will be significantly fewer people having to be socially distanced, have to wear a mask, but we don’t know.”
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In the headlines:
►The U.K. Foreign Secretary will urge the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to declare “vaccine ceasefires” in conflict zones to enable the COVID-19 inoculations of people in those zones, officials there said in a news release.
►The Massachusetts Department of Public Health on Tuesday announced its first case of the COVID-19 variant first identified in South Africa, from a woman with no history of travel.
►One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of N95 masks are pouring out of U.S. factories and heading into storage, but there still aren’t nearly enough going to hospitals, an Associated Press investigation found.
►President Joe Biden is extending a ban on home foreclosures for federally backed mortgages by three months and expanding a mortgage relief program to provide relief for families struggling financially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
►California opened federally supported mass vaccination sites Tuesday in Los Angeles and Oakland that are intended to bring inoculations to communities hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
? Today’s numbers: The U.S. has more than 27.7 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 487,900 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: More than 109.48 million cases and 2.41 million deaths. More than 71 million vaccine doses have been distributed in the U.S. and about 55 million have been administered, according to the CDC.
? What we’re reading: ‘It’s like we’re trying our best to help the virus’: A fourth wave is looming if US fails to contain COVID-19 variants,
