WATCH: CDC admits they have no data on COVID infection rates for teachers

Both Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky admitted in a press briefing on Wednesday that they have no information on how many teachers have gotten sick from COVID and that when teachers do get sick it is from the community and not from in school transmission.

A reporter asked "I'm wondering if you have done any statistical analysis of how many teachers or people in teacher households have died or been hospitalized due to COVID and have you done modeling for how many will die or be hospitalized under the various reopening scenarios?"

Fauci replied, saying "I don't have any information on that specifically, perhaps Dr. Walensky does from an epidemiological standpoint. But I don't, I haven't seen it broken down on number of teachers who have died. I don't think that information is readily available."

"I am unfamiliar with data there," Walensky chimed in, "what I can tell you is most of the data we have from schools have demonstrated that, and teachers specifically, have demonstrated that when disease comes into the school it's not because of spread that is happening in the school, it's because the members who are attending school, teachers, staff, bus workers, and what not, bus drivers, have gotten the disease from the community and not from one another in schools."

The CDC was then asked about prioritizing vaccines for teachers. Fauci said that teachers do not have to be all vaccinated before schools open, even though the CDC believes that teachers should be a "high a priority within essential personnel."

Fauci reiterated what Walensky said, which is that community spread, and not spread within schools, is the driver of infection. "The data that we have right now... is that when you see infections in the school setting... it is really reflective of what is going on in the community," Fauci said, noting that it is not because there are super spreading events in schools.