To think this just can't work - schools

[beachbodhi]

I'm sure this will have already been discussed but I really don't see how we can carry on like this through autumn / winter . How are people going to get by?
Little one got sent home yesterday , no temp -just started with a cough and runny nose in the afternoon. We've all become a bit snotty so looking like the usual cold we all end up with. We all have to isolate now for 14 days or until we can get tested. There are no tests available anywhere ! It's cocking things up big time as I'm really needed at work right now-this could comprise my position , that I'm lucky to still have all things considered. My friends are in the same boat - all off work and school for last 7days , kids recovered but can't go back as no tests . Fml my kids pick everything up so the next 4 months are going to be a nightmare! Shambles !
'I will never financially recover from this'

On one of the other threads, there is a succession of people who have or have had Covid lining up to tell you that they didn't have the classic symptoms. Loads seem to have had headaches and fatigue - no cough. Some have had temperatures, some not. Some whose children had no more than a runny nose.

According to the Zoe team, headache and fatigue are classic corona symptoms
Children also tummy upsets
Runny nose ( and associated dribble cough ) congestion and sneezing, not at all

If they've got a runny nose, it's not covid.

I believe this has been disproved. Will pop off to research. Besides, just because you have a runny nose it doesn't mean you don't have it.

@AstiniMartini

One of mine was off 2 days this week. sore throat (off) back at school on the advice of the school then diarrhoea which meant he could not go in anyway.

School are doing temperature checks before every class and if there is a spike they go home.

Problem is- now thr government is saying 'don't cofuse a cold with the symptoms' - but for 6 months we have all been told abot the symptoms that are remarkably similar to a cold and told to immediately self isolate. Now without testing the responsibility for making judgment calls is ours. Now, I am fine witht hat- but there are 60 million odd people in this country and so 60 million people potentailly making different judgment calls. But it will all be our fault somehow when numbers explode.

I agree. The overlap of symptoms between the official covid list and the common cold should have been addressed head on before schools went back. An "episode of coughing" is totally inadequate guideline and this outcome was utterly predictable by anyone who parents or works with young children.

Tried to research. Must go to work. But my point for now is. Just because a child has a runny nose this is not an indicator that they don't have it.

It's a complete no win situation

The trouble is that advice is so vague, as it has been all along. Non medical teaching staff, headteachers and school office staff are having to make medical decisions based on very wooly, vague advice. It's a nightmare.

I believe that the advice is presented this way in purpose. If schools have to close the school staff will be blamed, and parents can blame school staff for sending children home with the 'wrong' symptoms.

My DD had a bad cold (caught at school), full of snot. Got sent home from school after she was 50/50 about going in - not for Covid tho. 4 days later she’s fine in herself, ready to go back but developed a cough. I knew it was linked to the cold she picked up in school (and no positive tests in school), but it was a continuous cough no matter how you define it. Managed to get a test after much difficulty, negative result as expected.

How many times will this be repeated across the country throughout winter? It would be ok/manageable if tests were easily available, but they aren’t.

The government should have foreseen this.

The problem hitting the testing system is nothing new in healthcare. It is about high and fluctuating demand. The patterns are well known. The pattern for colds and sniffles will follow it because it always has.

The pattern; Early Monday morning people start calling GP practices. They can’t get through. They go to A&E or urgent care, where a physical queue starts to form. At mid morning a new peak is created by schools identifying children sent in who are ill and asking their parents to take them home. A new surge in demand at the GP surgery. People can’t get through and then go to Urgent care. Repeated early afternoon. The queue in A&E gets longer. By 6 the system will break. Later in the week demand reduces and capacity releases but not enough. Queues never get cleared and compound until not even the seasons make a difference.

The NHS spent years thinking they had to meet peaking demand by putting in more capacity. The result was they created new lanes on the motorway, walk-in centres etc, that just filled up at peak times. These are the queues that create wait times. They happen on Monday and Tuesday (and a Friday or Saturday night, for different reasons).

The answer which works is to smooth demand. To do that you need to capture the queue when it starts. That way you can prioritise and shift people into trough periods later in the week. This is the constant clearing of a queue on a daily basis.

The testing system doesn’t do this. Instead of a queue they have chaos. Because it does not allow a queue to form in a way it can be captured at source and managed at source. This method works and queues get smoothed and removed with fairly simple triaging techniques.

I don’t believe they can even say they have reliable data on demand. People where using fake postcodes, re-entering and turning up in person. The system has a problem but probably not the one it thinks it has. They are solving the wrong problem. They have been for some time. Now the lanes on the motorway have filled up. New lanes will fill up if they don’t manage the queue when it forms at source.

I feel like I’ve gone from dedicated employee with robust steps in place to ensure ill kids don’t affect my work to completely unreliable. All 3 dc have been swabbed even though dd3 caught dd2’s cold and dd3 had had a neg swab. Dd1 then got a virus but different to dd2&3 so then she needed swabbing and we were having to self isolate again and back to home schooling (which is shit).

It's concerned how many people here are basically saying they are sending dc into school with Covid symptoms.

A "little cough" or however you are framing it is almost certainly a continuous cough - the bar is 3 incidents of coughing over 24 hours, which is really not a lot.

I work with some vulnerable kids who will likely die if they get Covid. I want to keep my dc in school (althiugh we have had to isolate once) but am doing my nut about other parents sending in symptomatic dc to mix with mine.

We all know that the guidelines are that the dc will be off school much more than in a normal year. It is better than a full scale lockdown coming back.

Stompy I agree completely. And this so mumsnet with a socalled educated base of parents. If the message hasnt got thorough to them....

It sounds like that mixrd with the failure of access to easy testing meand that we are sneding kids in to spread the virus. I cant see that its working and maybe schools off will be an alternative. I wish in the messgaing they hadn't made out it was backnto school as normal and instead made clear thered be regular absences for "a little cough" in order to keep schools running. Certainly a couple of 2 weeks off or waiting for testing is better than no school.

Its not the messaging thats come though is it!?

Our school also saying to go in with a cold if none of the main Covid symptoms are present

@midgebabe

According to the Zoe team, headache and fatigue are classic corona symptoms Children also tummy upsets Runny nose ( and associated dribble cough ) congestion and sneezing, not at all

Sorry but that’s just not true! My DD had Covid 19 (she was tested) and she had no fever or cough - only a RUNNY NOSE

There seems to be so many symptoms with covid I can understand schools being wary.
Please don't forget, they are doing their best to keep your children safe and well.

I’ve had kids tell me they had pink medicine before school. Nothing mentioned by parents. I have a child withCF in my class. It makes me sick that some are so blasé.

@LuaDipa

Fgs.

*I think there isn't an answer to "what do you want them to do". Even if testing was quick, I don't think the current approaches around trying to prevent Covid in the schools will be workable. Too many children will miss too much time, the classes will be all over the place. Too many teachers will miss too much time.
Parents won't be able to manage the staying home - many will end up losing money that they have no room to lose, there will be some that lose their jobs, or, what I think will become increasingly the case, parents will leave kids home alone or make private arrangements for someone to watch them.

If they do part time schooling the problem is the same in terms of parents and work.

I think in a way schools are a lost cause. Covid will be passed around there. You can increase handwashing and try to maintain a certain amount of social distancing, but I'm not convinced there is a lot more to be done, realistically.

People assume there is AN ANSWER - if only we get it right. But maybe there isn't.*

So, you think there is a workable solution? Do tell - so far most governments have been struggling,

I think they are going to have to accept that children are likely to be exposed at school, and give up on this idea that it will be possible to really prevent that. Some way of allowing more parents to stay home might work but that would be a major social shift and difficult to do.

@midgebabe

According to the Zoe team, headache and fatigue are classic corona symptoms Children also tummy upsets Runny nose ( and associated dribble cough ) congestion and sneezing, not at all

I'm in Canada, running nose/congestion and sneezing are on the school checklist we've been given. It's kind of a disaster, the only differentiation from colds is the weird things like taste and smell.

My sons school sent a letter home stating that any child who has the following symptoms should be off for 10daty, I have no problem with this in principle but some of the symptoms are:
Headache
Tiredness
Aches and pains
Runny nose

These symptoms don’t need two weeks off school, surely! I understand coughs and temperatures etc, but tiredness??
It’s gone completely mad.

I think the coughing 3 times in 24 hrs is what means people are keeping them home
I reckon i prob cough 3 times in 24 hrs normally and kids when get colds also cough a bit so meet the 3 in 24 hr protocol
Its hard to determine

I thought it was 3 times in an hour.

It’s a coughing episode not one cough.

I think the coughing 3 times in 24 hrs is what means people are keeping them home
I reckon i prob cough 3 times in 24 hrs normally and kids when get colds also cough a bit so meet the 3 in 24 hr protocol
Its hard to determine

I think the rules are clear, but haven't been very well communicated to everyone. If you normally cough 3 times in 24 hours then you don't have to test/isolate. If your dc don't normally cough but now have a cough you believe is due to a cold and have coughed on 3 occasions in 24 hours then they do have to isolate until tested.

The guidelines we were issued (primary school) is quite clear that if the cough is part of a cold (ie accompanied by a runny nose and / or sneezing) then the child must be allowed in school if they feel well enough. If a parent calls 119 to request a test and says the child has a runny nose they are told neither a test nor isolation is necessary.

We have loads of children with colds in school at the moment!

It's a coughing episode, not one cough three times in 24 hours.

It's this sort of thing that means people get tested uneccesarily.