CDC: When Students Are Masked, 3 Feet Apart Is Safe in Classrooms

Researchers in Massachusetts recently set out to determine if schools could safely reduce social distancing length. The study's findings indicated that having three feet of social distance in the classroom is just as effective as having six feet as long as everyone wears a face mask.

The retrospective, state-wide study, which was published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, provides a ray of hope that schools could soon safely reopen to students full-time.

The Study

For the study, the researchers analyzed data from 251 reopened Massachusetts school districts that had COVID-19 infection control plans, including both three-feet and six-feet social distancing requirements for students and staff. The data was collected from September 2020 to January 2021.

The results found no significant difference in infection rates between the schools operating at three feet and the schools operating at six feet.

“This is great news for reopening schools,” Westyn Branch-Elliman, MD, MMSc, an infectious disease specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and clinical investigator at VA Boston Healthcare System, tells Verywell. “The six-feet requirement has been one of the biggest barriers for reopening because a school’s square footage can’t accommodate all children when they are spaced six feet apart. The critical question to address is if this is necessary.”

Will This Change COVID-19 School Guidance? 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had previously stated that social distancing guidelines in schools should be six feet. On March 19, the CDC said revised its school reopening guidelines to reflect the new evidence in favor of three-feet of social distancing. The updated guidance could help get students back in the classroom faster.

“But our study has real-world data and it should be used to inform the policy conversation,” Branch-Elliman says.

According to the Washington Post, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that “as soon as our guidance came out, it became very clear that six feet was among the things that was keeping schools closed.”

In an interview with CNN's State of the Union, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the new evidence could also support the Biden Administration’s goal of getting children back in the classroom five days a week by the end of April, as reducing the requirement to three feet will allow more students to return to in-person learning.

How States Are Responding

The state of Massachusetts already adopted the three-foot social distancing guidelines as part of its COVID-19 infection control plan. Elsewhere in the United States, the Northern Virginia school system has also been an early adopter of the three-foot recommendation. The change has allowed the state to accelerate its in-person reopening plans to four-days-a-week by April 20.

School Will Likely Never Be the Same

While schools are working on reopening and getting back to a feeling of normalcy, experts have pointed out that education has been forever changed.

According to The Hechinger Report (a non-profit that covers education), the consensus among school district leaders is that “public education will never be the same” after the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the pandemic’s effect on school-aged children has been troublesome, the changes in education have not been all bad. Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, told the Hechinger Report that “there are so many discoveries, realizations, and so much innovation. This wasn’t just a snapshot in time. It’s going to require us to be in a continual cycle of figuring out new and better ways to do things.”

The information in this article is current as of the date listed, which means newer information may be available when you read this. For the most recent updates on COVID-19, visit our coronavirus news page.