Denmark re opening Schools on Wednesday!

[dottiedodah]

Whats the general feeling on this? They say they have stabilised and are ready to reopen Schools and Day Centres on Wednesday! Seems a bit soon to me

[Laniakea]

Yay! Go Denmark!

[manicinsomniac]

I'm not sure. They've got nearly as many cases per capita as we have (1005 per million to our 1086) but a much lower death rate.

They do seem to be post peak but only by a few days.

I think I'd have given it another week or so to make sure the trend was continuing.

[DixieFlatline]

The number of people in hospital/on the ITU/on a ventilator with corona has been falling for days to weeks now, and never reached close to capacity. I don’t see why allowing some children back soon is unwise.

[DixieFlatline]

nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-02-27-nyeste-corona-tal-fra-danmark-og-verden-saa-mange-er-smittede-doede-og-indlagte

[sofasitter]

Im from Denmark and i am not impressed. Luckily my kids are in private School and have the option of staying home and be online studying untill summer holiday.
Public school children have to go - even if they have sick siblings or patents. Totally isbane.

[NotGenerationAlpha]

The peak needed is determined by hospital capacity,. Presumably they have a much larger capacity to take hospital admissions than us. It’s good to be able to start resuming economic capacity. We need to work and eat too.

[Appuskidu]

Hmm, that isn’t quite the whole picture.

Some primaries are planning to start back on Wednesday many are waiting until the 20th to see what the stats are looking like.

They are going back with strict testing and cleaning regimes, heavily reduced hours, maximum of 10 to a class including teachers and distance learning continuing for most.

It’s really not ‘schools back as normal on Wednesday’.

[dottiedodah]

That seems more sensible then ,just a staged approach.

[greenlynx]

I don’t know much about their situation, but for me it depends how much they are testing and what is their criteria for testing, are they testing for antibodies, what is their hospital capacity and ICU capacity in comparison with other countries, how good in general is their health care system and how their social care system work, what is their situation with PPE, how big their classes are. Without these factors it’s difficult to compare even knowing their cases rate and deaths rate.
The amount of daily cases in Denmark is indeed getting lower so maybe why they are opening schools but we are still not talking about 20 cases which I would consider as a good rate for going out.

[cantkeepawayforever]

To be fair, except for the testing, that sounds much like what we are currently offering - schools open for a small number (children of key workers and the vulnerable), small numbers per class, social distancing and heavy cleaning, distance learning continuing for most....

[Appuskidu]

To be fair, except for the testing, that sounds much like what we are currently offering - schools open for a small number (children of key workers and the vulnerable), small numbers per class, social distancing and heavy cleaning, distance learning continuing for most....

Good point.

[cantkeepawayforever]

If they were previously absolutely closed, then what the UK currently offers would be reported as 'schools re-opening'...whereas what we interpret when we hear that phrase is 'schools fully opening for all, normal service resumed'

[greenlynx]

@Appuskidu
Thanks for the details, it makes more sense now. I still wouldn’t be happy myself about it but it looks much better than simply reopening schools.

[Appuskidu]

Denmark have also only ever had more than 20 deaths in a day once. We are getting nearly 1000 a day-it’s a very different situation there.

[Chipperfish]

Its not free for all schools back.

The nurseries and primary schools will be opening first. Most have continued to run at reduced capacity for children of key workers and the vulnerable with low staff ratios and social distancing, cleaning etc and this is being opened to more people than key workers
As far as I was aware there is no obligation to send your child but I will check this (am in private school also, keyworker but have kept my kids off as DH was home)

'Secondary education' 6th to 10th classes are still home until 10th May at least with distance learning as before.

Greenlynx - I work in this area. While the virus is still spreading in the community in DK its been controlled at a rate that means that patients who need to be in hospital, and need ventilation are able to obtain it. ICUs here are nowhere near capacity (approx 1000 ventilated beds are available across the country) and are able to cope with corona work as well as the usual sick patients that require intensive care. Not all ICUs are open to corona either, a lot of work has been going on to cohort isolate corona patients in certain places and hospitals which allows concentration of both infection risk but also some development of expertise (given its a new variant of virus we are still working out what it can do and how best to provide organ support). No testing for antibodies but there is an increased program of testing being rolled out.

This website www.sst.dk/da/corona/tal-og-overvaagning
has the latest figures (it should be reasonably easy to translate a few words to understand the graphs) and is updated about 1-2pm every day. As of 2 pm today there were 408 patients in hospital with Corona with about 106 in ICU, and 90 of those being ventilated, though its not spread evenly across the country. I am not sure of the exact number of cases self isolating at home on top of this but the health service is coping at present

Also most of the other non elective functions of the health service are still running, eg if you need chemo or a cancer op you are still getting it without a delay, though elective operations have been paused.

It has also been discussed that this phased reopening of the schools is not a given and the plan can be reassessed and lockdown resumed if required.

[greenlynx]

UK is only testing the patients in the hospitals which means milder cases are not covered by statistics. Also different countries have different criteria for hospital admission, to get to the hospital in UK you need to be really bad. So in reality we have much more infected people. South Korea’s testing is much more wider so I would consider their figures more realistic. It looks like DK is something in between.

By the way don’t get me wrong I’m very glad that Denmark has better situation. And I really want to see positive examples and learn lessons from them. I just disagree that some people are saying that Denmark’s decision to open school means we need to do this too. Such approach is too simple. We need to look at wider picture.

[Bool]

Kids should go back to school and we should start opening up a bit whilst protecting the vulnerable. We are headed for an enormous global humanitarian disaster far bigger than the number that will die from this virus. Adults and children around the world dying because they will dip below the poverty line. I have a friend in India who says already the poverty situation is worsening. I am so surprised we are not talking about this. Instead we have police checking shopping trolleys for Easter eggs and moving on people sitting alone in the sunshine.

[Davincitoad]

To anyone saying we should also. Please just kindly fuck off.

We have near to 1000 deaths a day.

So we are advocating social distance BUT 1000 kids can mingle. Can get on buses. Can sit in a room of 30+. Staff can’t go to the shops in a pair BUT can sit in a meeting with 100 others. With 30 kids, are you for real?

The fact that there is an emergency hospital opening in a vacant building down the road doesn’t make this ok. What is wrong with people and this obsessions with schools? It won’t make the virus go away hate to tell you think. It won’t make things ok because you don’t have to look after your own kids anymore. It will lead to the second wave. And yes not many children get sick but would you knowingly put your child at risk?

[Appuskidu]

Kids should go back to school and we should start opening up a bit whilst protecting the vulnerable

Except we can’t staff the schools properly without the vulnerable teachers.

[Chris5690]

So 106 people in icu in total in denmark.

Anyone know how many people are in icu in the uk?

As circa 1000 people are tragically dying A DAY in the UK. So, we have an outbreak severly worse than denmark. Good for them - sad our country couldn't have controlled our much worse outbreak better.

[Bool]

Hundreds of thousands are going to die because of being plunged into poverty. But hey let’s only look in our own backyard shall we.

[midgebabe]

bool howndo you get to hundreds of thousands of poverty deaths? And doesn't that depend in part on how much inequality we can drive out of our society?

[Bool]

Lockdown will not drive inequality out of society. It will exacerbate it. This is going to be a massive humanitarian disaster for a lot of people. Losing businesses, jobs, suicide, mental health issues, domestic violence but more importantly the millions (many in development countries) who will now fall under the poverty line. You don’t have to agree with me. But think about it. We need to look at this from a macro level.

[Bool]

*developing

[Bool]

More kids will suffer from hunger and poverty because of this than from catching Covid in schools. Am just saying we need to look a bit broader.