NYC Schools Have Been Closed For Months. Must Health Clinics Remain Shuttered, Too?

There are about 700,000 visits annually to health centers in schools in New York—for routine checkups, dental care, behavioral counseling and vaccinations.

Sarah Murphy, from the School-Based Health Alliance, said vaccine-preventable diseases like the measles don't stop for pandemics, but many kids have fallen behind on their routine vaccinations during the lockdown. "The last thing we need is to add measles on top of a pandemic."

A Health Department spokesman said childhood vaccines are down 68 percent over the same period last year.

About two-thirds of the state's 270 school-based clinics are located in the city. Most outside the five boroughs either remained open throughout the lockdown or closed and reopened.  

A spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio said the administration was in "active conversations and moving quickly to reopen our school-based health clinics in the safest way possible prior to the start of school."

He did not, however, clarify the timetable, or what was stopping the city from opening them.