With the Covid-19 Delta variant infecting more children, many parents are concerned about keeping unvaccinated young children safe while schools reopen and extracurricular activities resume.
The best protection against Delta, say doctors and public health officials, is vaccination. But that doesn’t directly help under-12s who aren’t eligible for the shots. Therefore, parents need to weigh the risks and benefits of fall activities, from face-to-face school to sports, play dates, and birthday parties.
Most parents already know the basics: masks reduce transmission and outdoors is safer than indoors. Beyond that, doctors suggest some principles to guide decision-making this fall. Prioritize your most important activities, they say, and omit others. Within the selected activities, look for ways to reduce the risk.
“Almost nothing right now is zero risk,” says Leana Wen, an emergency physician and professor of public health at George Washington University in Washington, DC. higher risk and lower value activities “.
The risk accumulates with each activity, he notes. Don’t assume that if you are doing a higher risk activity, you could do more.