Hi, and welcome to COVID Quickly, a scientific American podcast series.

This is your fast track update on the COVID pandemic.

We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus

and the disease.

We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means.

I'm Tony Lewis, I'm Josh Fishman, and we're a scientific American senior health editors.

This is our Back to School special episode.

We'll talk about why COVID testing is about to become a school problem.

And then there's some good news about kids' risk for long COVID.

It's pretty low.

If you've got young kids, you've probably already started buying fresh notebooks and maybe

a new backpack.

It's back to school time.

And you've probably bought into some variety too.

Schools are large group settings, and group settings are good places for COVID outbreaks

with the infectious sub variant BA5 running around.

You probably got alert letters last spring saying someone in your kid's class tested positive,

and if your kid was a close contact, go get your child tested too.

Easy rapid testing is a good way to contain outbreaks, and we all want to keep kids and

teachers safe and keep schools open.

True, but we're beginning to see some problems coming up with this containment strategy.

Let me start with Ashish Jha, the physician who's the White House COVID Response Coordinator.

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