What is covid going to do to education this year?

I’ve never had flu or norovirus for 9 weeks though. And not twice in 14 months.

Flu twice in my lifetime. Longest was 3 weeks.

Norovirus twice. Longest was 3 days.

We had a staff training day on Friday, and people started becoming ill Sunday/Monday/Tuesday

So no different to most offices if you’re describing adults-only, in a professional setting. Not something that’s affected my offices or those that I deal with.

It will have impact if high numbers of staff are off sick. This current strain seems to be making people quite ill for 2 weeks or so. Teachers famously battle through a cold but I'm not sure that will happen with this. A scholarship can cope with one or two people off for a week or two but if its many they'll struggle. Even if they manage to cover sufficiently to keep one (which they likely will) it will affect the provision.

Maybe people won't know they have Covid becuase they're not testing but they'll still be ill enough to need time off work, which in sufficient numbers will have an impact.

When a staff member has flu it's unusual for another to get it, covid isn't like that.

I have it for the 3rd time, although fortunately seem to be on the tail end.
I did test (vulnerable parent) but I didn't need to - the headache, the brain fog and the complete loss of the sense of smell were enough to separate it from a general cold.

I know people say treat it like flu, but I've had flu twice in 39 years, I've had covid 3 times in 3 years. I don't want to feel this shit for two weeks out of every year, it's only a matter of time before we all end up long covid really if we keep being reinfected so often

Yes, that's my point about the impact on schools. Flu is really quite unusual, I don't think I've ever had it. I've been flu level ill with Covid twice in the last 3 years and when I had it, everyone I'd had any sort of contact with also got it, which doesn't happen with other illnesses.

So what would be your suggestion to stop this happening? Baring in mind vaccines don't stop you getting it or feeling like death warmed up.

I have no idea what the answer is. I'm not a scientist or a doctor or someone who works in public health.
What I would like to see is hand sanitiser reintroduced into the classrooms, and to encourage a culture of wearing face masks when poorly - like Asian countries do. Better paid sick leave so employees do not feel they have to come in to work and spread it because they cannot afford to take time off and vaccines available for everyone even if those who are not deemed vulnerable have to pay a small fee (similar to the flu jab). Of course we cannot prevent it now, but we can try and minimise the spread.

We need

a) proper surveillance, so that we know when case levels are rising early in the curve, and can be nimble with precautions
b) masks in all medical settings
c) consider masks in other places (eg public transport) when cases are rising significantly
d) invest in better ventilation in schools and other indoor public areas (Corsi-Rosenthal boxes are v cheap, and could be built by students in DT lessons).

Remember, the virus could mutate to evade immunity, but cannot mutate past filters and masks, but

e) widen vaccine programme, so more people become less ill
f) provide prophylactic MABs for the most critically vulnerable (absolute scandal this was not done when there were effective MABs in 2022)
g) foster a school and workplace ethos where people do not come in when they have symptoms (because difficult as it might be to cover a few days, it's far more damaging if weeks of long covid prevent attendance) including urging employers to have better sick leave policies (some already manage this, we need to find ways to bring more to that standard)

Not affected any of our local schools in london

@RoseAndRose the problem is rightly masks long term aren't socially acceptable for most (risk vs benefit). This includes staff in medical settings frankly it's uncomfortable in a service already stretched to its limits. Add in an aging estate without aircon where the we are expecting the staff to work with active COVID you would lose more staff.

Vaccinating is expensive and takes away from staff available for other tasks. Our last vaccine made us more ill than the virus.

MABs have limited evidence against the current strains, companies don't seem interested in developing more.

Everyone going off sick with COVIS would take kids away from education with a negative effect, lose us more money economically, and in healthcare make the waiting lists worse.

HEPA filters might work but the kids are going to be on buses or in each others lounges passing it around outside of schools anyway. Cost vs benefit doesn't stack up.

I'm more interested in H3N8 all our efforts are needed on a vaccination for that.

Ours aren’t back until Thursday so I have no idea.

I work in the NHS and we don’t have to test and only stay off work if we if we’re too unwell to do our jobs.

I can’t see it having any more of an effect than any pre covid year tbh as it’s just another virus in circulation now.

There are so many smaller steps we could have taken but didn't.

It was hard enough tyring to keep a crack of a window open peak winter and covid...

It was amazing in Italy, we went at the tail end of covid and they had to have fp2 masks and to fly we had to have fp2

What is h3n8

I was ill last week. It may have been Covid, it might have been some other random virus. Who cares? Covid is just one of the viruses circulating now. We need to just get in with it.

Will COVID get stronger and stronger? If it was produced as a result of gain of function experiments does that mean it will? I don’t suppose we will ever know the truth.

It would help if teachers could access the vaccine - it would mean less disruption for the wider community.
I know the government says schools are safe and kids don’t spread it and they aren’t a source of infection for the wider community but the reality seems to be completely the opposite to me.

But one in ten get long Covid. This is one of the causes of the labour shortage. So you are saying it’s OK for more to get it? And add to labour shortage, welfare bills and nhs bills.

And more and more will get it. Apart from the ones who already have it.

Do you have a source for this info?

Funny how they’re suddenly testing now the weather is nice but they are meant to be at work…

Statement was made yesterday.

They're not requiring mass testing by the public, but are restarting surveillance testing

COVID surveillance to restart ahead of winter amid new variant concerns | UK News | Sky News

Every major news outlet carried it.

Scottish schools have been back for weeks…