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As the Delta variant surged through the US this summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adjusted its definition of a close contact for students in classrooms—that is, for who would be contacted and urged to quarantine if they’d been near someone who later tested positive for COVID-19. Last school year, any child within 6 feet of an infected person for a total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period needed to quarantine. This school year, with little fanfare, the CDC reduced this distance to 3 feet in classrooms, as long as both students consistently wore well-fitting masks. (If they didn’t, or if either person was an adult, or if the contact happened anywhere in the school other than the classroom, the 6-foot rule still applies.)
This may not seem like a major shift, but in practice, it’s likely to mean that most ...
