Quincy Reporter

Adams County pediatrician Todd Porter is calling on the state to do away with COVID-19 protocols as the fall school year begins. 

He argued that the guidelines are no longer relevant that cause harm more than protection.

“IDPH’s current COVID-19 Interim Guidance For Schools (revised June 27) continues to endorse CDC guidance recommending testing and isolation of all symptomatic students with minimum five days of isolation for all positive cases with additional donning of a mask for another five days when out in public,” Porter wrote in Herald-Whig. "This is the outdated and harmful public health guidance that our pediatric clinic provides parents to this day, resulting in forced absenteeism from school and extracurriculars for a now endemic respiratory virus that poses no greater threat to children than other seasonal respiratory viruses for which we have never imposed systematic testing and isolation."

Citing countries such as Norway and Denmark, he argued that these nations state that "children should not be tested for COVID-19, as making them stay home would do far more harm than the virus.” 

“Locally I can tell you that the pediatric patients I have cared for in hospital were admitted for respiratory complications due to Rhino/Enterovirus and not for COVID-19,” Porter said. “It is time to demystify the COVID-19 virus and categorize it along with all other seasonal respiratory viruses. We need to end the distortion of risk that exists within our societal psyche. The truth is that COVID-19 positivity in healthy children is not coupled with severe disease. For example, the entire country of Iceland has had no hospitalization or deaths from COVID-19 in children the entire pandemic.” 

He also noted that Americans "have not been given accurate information by our CDC on whether children have died or been hospitalized from or simply with COVID-19 and this has caused a vast misunderstanding of how severe COVID-19 is in children.” 

Porter is a community pediatrician with a "special interests in literacy/dyslexia and injury prevention," according to his Twitter bio. He is associated with the Quincy Medical Group and certified by the American Board of Pediatrics.

Some are worried that Gov. J.B. Pritzker will use emergency powers to place extraordinary protocols on students in particular. 

“They were given autonomy at the local level and then at the last minute, a week before school starts, the [Illinois Department of Public Health] and the [Illinois State Board of Education] dropped new rules, standardized the process and really threw chaos into the start of the school year,” State Sen. John Curran (R-Lemont) told WMAY, according to The Center Square. “That is what we must avoid this year.”

Pritzker recently extended his emergency powers for the 30th time when IDPH announced “On July 12, the Gov. JB Pritzker signed Executive Order 2022-16 regarding health care worker vaccination and testing. The following are emergency rules adopted by the Department in response to Gov. JB Pritzker’s Gubernatorial Disaster Proclamations and Executive Orders related to COVID-19."