By the time Joe Biden took office several months after the pandemic began, Americans were tired of dealing with closures of K-12 schools, businesses and public spaces. During the start of his tenure, one of the main challenges Biden faced was how to proceed on his promise to use evidence to guide openings and closings.
As president, Biden has power to set rules for federal facilities and for transportation, such as mask mandates for airports and airplanes. But he doesn't have the power to open or close schools or businesses.
School openings have been closely watched by parents across the country. But state leaders usually set policies for schools, with some schools also setting their own rules, said Christine Pitts, a resident policy fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
"In reality, the feds have almost no oversight in what happens at the state level," Pitts said.
When Biden took office, about half of students were attending virtual-only schools, according to Burbio, a website that tracks school opening data nationwide.
In February 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that schools use universal masking, keep everyone 6 feet apart, clean regularly, and prioritize the vaccination of teachers and quarantines. Some health experts criticized parts of the guidance, saying it overemphasized cleaning and would have led to too many schools shutting down. By that point, millions of students were already back at in person school at least some days each week.
The CDC issued multiple updates on schools throughout 2021 including the "test to stay" guidance in December that aimed to reduce the number of children sent home to quarantine.
Beyond schools, the Biden administration generally operated under the assumption that businesses and facilities would be open. The CDC guidance focused on best practices to safely operate — such as guidance for workplaces about masks, ventilation and COVID-19 testing, and mandating vaccines for federal workers. The Biden administration's vaccine mandate for large businesses and health care workers has been tied up in litigation with rulings expected soon by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Some experts called on the Biden administration and the CDC to improve how it communicated about the guidance.
Glen Nowak, co-director of Center for Health & Risk Communication at the University of Georgia, said the Biden administration has "deferred to the CDC for advice and direction and what to tell schools and states."
But the "problem with COVID as we have seen is the science, data and evidence are all dynamic and keep changing," Nowak said.
At the end of 2021 as the omicron variant was surging, the CDC shortened the recommended isolation period from 10 to five days for people who are asymptomatic or their symptoms are lessening. Some public health experts criticized the new guidance because it didn't include a testing requirement. At the start of the new year, there was a shortage of at-home tests and in-person appointments were hard to come by as people in some cities waited in long lines.
"To me, this feels honestly more about economics than about the science," Yonatan Grad, an associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told the New York Times.
The CDC said that the change was motivated by science demonstrating that the majority of transmission occurs early in the course of illness. That new guidance also came at a time when some industries were struggling with staff shortages in part due to employees having to quarantine.
Overall, the Biden administration has been using science-based guidance in most cases, but its decisions have also been met at times with criticism and controversy.
We will continue to monitor the Biden administration's guidance on openings and closings. For now we continue to rate his progress In the Works.
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