Mayo Clinic: "Masks are the best protection"

(ABC 6 News) – With students heading back to the classroom, there are many questions parents have about what this school year will look like.

Will we need to go back to distance learning?

Will kids need to wear face masks? And what about the delta variant.

Kids now make up a good portion of our unvaccinated or unprotected group of the population.

Mayo Clinic recommends getting everyone in your household who’s over the age of 12 vaccinated before the school year starts.

They say it should be the first thing on your back-to-school checklist.

Vaccinations and wearing face masks, they say are the best things you can do to prevent getting and transmitting the virus.

"It makes it all the more critical that we employ every preventative measure that we have in our tool kit that is supported by science and that has been demonstrated to be safe and effective in preventing transmission of this virus, to accomplish this safe return back to school for all of our kids," said Dr. Nipunie Rajapakse, Mayo Clinic Children’s Center Pediatric Infectious Disease.

Two doses continue to provide excellent protection against infection and death from Covid-19, as well as the delta variant.