Kushner Will ’Absolutely’ Send His Children to School Despite Covid-19 Risks

By Staff, Agencies

White House adviser and son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, said he will “absolutely” send his children back to school when classes reopen, despite widespread concerns that in-person learning puts children, faculty and their families at risk from Covid-19.

The Trump administration has pushed for schools across the country to reopen, despite the concerns. One public school district in Arizona was forced to cancel plans to reopen on Monday after more than 100 teachers and other staff members called in sick.

In its latest guidance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] said the number and rate of coronavirus cases in children had risen “steadily” from March to July, but the true number of cases remains unknown due to a lack of testing.

However, Kushner, a member of the White House coronavirus taskforce, told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning that he had no concerns about his children returning to class “because children have a six times higher chance to die from the flu than from the coronavirus, so based on the data I’ve seen I don’t believe that’s a risk.”

Kushner has three children with Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.

“This virus impacts different people at different rates,” he said. “Our school’s not opening back up five days a week, I wish they would but we absolutely will be sending our kids back.”

In its guidance update, the CDC said school closures could have contributed to initially low rates of cases in children early in the pandemic.

“This may explain the low incidence in children compared with adults,” the agency said. “Comparing trends in pediatric infections before and after the return to in-person school and other activities may provide additional understanding about infections in children.”

Kushner also defended the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic as “aggressive,” even as daily deaths reached 1,500 last week, and commonly exceed 1,000 per day, comparable to May’s mortality rates. Covid-19 has left almost 170,000 people dead in the US and more than 5.3m cases have been reported across the country, the highest tally in the world.

In fact, Trump has been widely criticized for promoting the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine despite mounting evidence that it doesn’t work for coronavirus patients. Trump also stunned public health experts by suggesting people could receive injections of disinfectant to cure the coronavirus, a notion described as “dangerous” and “jaw-dropping”.