The Post and Courier’s Skylar Laird recently attended IMPH's press conference regarding lessons learned from COVID-19.

In its editorial, the Post and Courier endorsed the importance of IMPH's report and touched on the recommendation to keep schools open during contagious disease outbreaks but develop the infrastructure and capacity to shift to virtual and hybrid learning as needed to prevent the interruption of education:

Anyone who didn’t realize the disastrous impact that the COVID school closures had on our children should have been awakened by the dramatic recommendation from a group of public health experts reviewing South Carolina’s response to COVID-19: Keep our schools opened during the next disease outbreak. The report from the S.C. Institute of Medicine and Public Health included caveats, about the potential need to revert temporarily to remote learning under extreme circumstances. But as The Post and Courier’s Skylar Laird reports, the bottom line, according to task force co-chairman and retired USC President Harris Pastides, is unequivocal: “’Be prepared to be virtual, be prepared to be hybrid, but don’t close the schools. Because we’ve learned about the devastating impact on students, the burden on their families, on teachers.”

To read the full story, visit the Post and Courier website.