Centner Academy, a private school in Miami, Florida, is making headlines for their new rules on recently vaccinated students: they must quarantine for 30 days after each dose, Yahoo News reports.
"Because of the potential impact on other students and our school community, vaccinated students will need to stay at home for 30 days post-vaccination for each dose and booster they receive and may return to school after 30 days as long as the student is healthy and symptom-free," the letter sent to parents of students says. Local news station WSVN obtained a copy of this letter.
School officials told Insider the policy was meant to be a "prudent precautionary measure after much thoughtful deliberation." This decision, however, is based on an unfounded claim that the vaccine contains a live strand of the virus, meaning vaccinated children could infect unvaccinated students.
"None of the vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. contain a live virus," according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s page on vaccine myths. Research and experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. expert on coronavirus, say vaccinated individuals are less likely to spread the virus compared to unvaccinated people.
Dr. Aileen Marty of Florida International University has called the school's claims "science fiction."
"What happens 30 days after they get vaccinated? What kind of nonsense is this?" Dr. Marty says. "Where did they get that? There's nothing in the recommendations to that… they made that up. That's science fiction, not even science fiction because it's pure fiction."
This wasn't the first time Centner Academy was in the news. The school barred newly vaccinated teachers from interacting with students if they got shots over the summer, The New York Times reported in May.
"Teachers who get the vaccine over the summer will not be allowed to return, the letter said, until clinical trials on the vaccine are completed, and then only 'if a position is still available at that time' — effectively making teachers’ employment contingent on avoiding the vaccine," NYT writer Patricia Mazzei wrote.