Child's class bubble close but should it have been?

[TellerTuesday4EVA]

This also happened to a friend with DC at a different school.

Message to parents last night, DD's class bubble will now be closed and children to isolate for 14 days as a child in the bubble has tested positive over the weekend.

Class group chat starts, one mum comes on & says it's X but we're ok. Then says X doesn't have any symptoms, was me on Friday afternoon and husband Saturday but we got her tested anyway and it's positive.

Now every single thing I have read says only to have a test if you develop symptoms. X would have to self isolate anyway due to the parents having positive tests but by getting her tested they now closed the bubble and all 30 kids are at home for 14 days. This what would happen if following the rules but then it shows the system if flawed as this child obviously did have it and was asymptotic.

So I don't know if I'm right to be annoyed by this or not. I'm certainly not looking forward to 2 weeks home schooling again.

Who is taking their kids to the doctors? As if they are sat in a waiting room? Like the old days, contaminating everyone.

I've been into our surgery twice for vaccinations, and on each occasion there have been only two or three people waiting in a large waiting area with no chance of picking up the virus from anyone. There's lots of sanitiser around, everyone is strongly encouraged to wear masks, and they wipe down the seats people have been using.

@GlitteryUnicornSparkles but what we don't know is whether these people are passing on the infection or not and what the risk is compared to people with symptoms.

We urgently need to do more research.

@PurpleDaisies

How is it possible that no other child or parent had no symptoms?

Something like 80% of people can be asymptotic depending on exactly where you get your figures from.

I’m surprised you haven’t heard of this, it has been widely reported in the mainstream news.

So if 'upto' 80% are asymptomatic are we assuming that the other 20%ish have previously had the virus and all 30 are carriers?

Why did no one else get the virus?

@GrapefruitsAreNotTheOnlyFruit
A meta analysis so probably the best research wise you can find at the moment
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32562846/

Also a nice article on how asymptomatic people might be driving the epidemic
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7200054/

These came as the first answers from my quick research so there will be more I’m sure.

Why does everyone assume the parents of the child in question broke the rules to get their child tested? I have the ZOE reporting app on my phone and have been invited to be tested a couple of times purely because I reported a headache, and it also says the members of my household can be tested whether they have symptoms or not.

I agree they didnt follow the rules, but they did use common sense. The system is stupid in only testing people with symptoms and not very close contacts even though we know a lot of people are asymptomatic and we dont know that asymptomatic people arent contagious.

If someone tests positive, in my opinion they should be testing close contacts to see if they caught it from them, and testing them again on say day 5 and day 10 to make sure they haven't passed it on either.

I could catch it, manage to isolate from my child for a few days and then pass it on to her on say day 8 or 10 and if she was asymptomatic, she would go into school and spread it around to 30 other children in her bubble, and under current guidelines there is absolutely no way of knowing this is happening or stopping jt

So if 'upto' 80% are asymptomatic are we assuming that the other 20%ish have previously had the virus and all 30 are carriers?

I don’t understand what you mean by this.

People can be infected without showing symptoms and it is possible to spread the virus to others (although there is some discussion about asymptomatic people being less infectious).

Not everyone who is in contact with a positive individual will catch the virus, but you can’t know for sure who will or won’t so all close contacts (or the bubble in school) have to isolate until they wouldn’t be infectious any more.

@GrapefruitsAreNotTheOnlyFruit, I think the idea that only symptomatic people should be tested is linked to the TEST rather than transmission rates.

We have plenty of research on asymptomatic transmission. I’m sure that evidence will give various results. But that’s also why I prefer to rely on meta analysis (that pool the results of various research already done).

So if 'upto' 80% are asymptomatic are we assuming that the other 20%ish have previously had the virus and all 30 are carriers?

You have to assume that 100% could be infected, whether they ultimately get Covid or not and whether they have symptoms or not. Of course some won't be, but no-one knows which ones.

Why did no one else get the virus?

It's too early to say whether anyone else will get the virus at the moment.

Here's another one European Centre for disease control scroll down mid page on the role of Asymptomatic spread: www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/latest-evidence/transmission

YABVU. Doesn’t matter why they had the test. She had it and is positive so thank god she did. Lots of people are asymptotic just like this child, another child could have caught it and had no symptoms and therefore passed it along due to not isolating. This kind of thinking is why the virus has spread further and we are now in second lockdown.

So if 'upto' 80% are asymptomatic are we assuming that the other 20%ish have previously had the virus and all 30 are carriers?

Maybe it is helpful to think of it as if 10 people actually have coronavirus, you would expect 8 of them to have no symptoms at all. That doesn’t mean that in a group of 10, you always get 8 without symptoms, it’s on average. You could have a group where 10 have symptoms, or no one has symptoms.

I think the point OP is making very clear. She’s annoyed that her child (and she) have to be at home for 14 days. No, she’s not worried about the flawed system and Covid.
Someone pointed out that the rules whom to test are here for a reason. Yes, and this reason is that testing capacity is limited. It’s the only reason why government is restricting testing to those with symptoms, those who are going to have medical procedures and those in certain jobs. It’s only about capacity.
OP, the facts are clear, your child was in contact with a positive case and have to isolate because we are in the middle in pandemic and want to stop it spreading.
By the way you don’t know for sure about this other child. Maybe he/she had symptoms last Thursday/Friday but parents sent him/her to school because it’s more convenient for them and now they’re trying to look good. I don’t think anyone would test a child without any reason at all, this test is not very pleasant procedure.

Re. asymptomatic spreading. I work in a university and we had a rapidly accelerating number of cases at the start of term. These (hundreds of) cases were mostly in halls. The university claimed that this was not an outbreak as the on-site testing service did not provide evidence of any positive cases being spread to each other. Yet the virus was clearly being spread within halls.

Is OP not asking whether it would be better if everyone in a household with an infection had a test given that if they hadn't had a test then this case wouldn't have been found? I might have misunderstood because to me it's always seemed a bit illogical.

@Usernamenotavailabl

What makes you so solute someone “would” be really ill from it
If the kid hadn’t been tested no one would ever know. There is no way on earth other kids in the class haven’t had it before this kid was tested and no one (as far as OP has said) has been really ill as a resul

I said could, not would.
She could have passed it onto someone unwittingly who could have been really ill with it.
Ignorance is bliss right?
Long as you don''t know, it's alright?
Or something....
Some of these replies are just gobsmacking, and I'm not one to get paranoid about the rona usually.

@Quaagars Many of the replies just demonstrate why we are in Lockdown 2.0 - and I neither am paranoid about the virus, people are selfish and bloody stupid.

There could be several reasons why that child was tested (Vulnerable, Zoe App, had symptoms but didn't disclose etc.).

@falcon5

Is OP not asking whether it would be better if everyone in a household with an infection had a test given that if they hadn't had a test then this case wouldn't have been found? I might have misunderstood because to me it's always seemed a bit illogical.

No she isn’t. She’s made it clear that she thinks the class shouldn’t be isolating despite the positive test, as they would already have been exposed last week and they would only be able to pass it on to their bubble or to their immediate family.

There have been 8 cases at my DC's school, all in children who had no contact with each other. I find it monumentally hard to believe that 8 separate children all contracted Covid from somewhere that wasn't school and none of them passed it on to anyone at school. The likelihood is that there are a lot of asymptomatic cases at school that no one knows about.

I’m also very interested in asymptomatic people passing on the virus...

A woman I know was a waitress, close contact with many customers, 5/6 days a week, close contact with all the other waiting staff and kitchen staff etc, and then when she was asked to do a random test she came back as positive.

She was completely fine and had no symptoms at all.

She could have been positive for 1 day, 5 days, 10 days who knows?

The restaurant closed down, all staff isolated and all customers who had been there in there were contacted and informed.

Not one other staff member got symptoms or required testing and neither did any of the customers.

That waitress could have been working with the virus for many, many days, yet nobody she came into contact with during that time showed any symptoms.

Is it because she was symptomatic and couldn’t transfer it?

Was everyone just lucky?

Or did she pass it on to people but they were also asymptomatic cases?

It's irrelevant that if she hadn't been tested no one would know and it would stay open.

The child was tested - track and trace now appear to offer this to close contacts when they call.

The child is now a known positive case.

Therefore their close contacts need to be informed - anyone with the, from the 2 days prior to symptoms starting. The rest of the class will have to isolate from their last contact with the child - so 14 days from the Friday.

The idea is to reduce risk and halt the spread of the virus. If the rest of the class went in, then one of them could have caught it, could have no symptoms but could be spreading it to others. A more vulnerable person could then catch it. By reducing contact now for those contacts, the risk of it being passed on to others is reduced.

@ThornAmongstRoses

I’m also very interested in asymptomatic people passing on the virus...

A woman I know was a waitress, close contact with many customers, 5/6 days a week, close contact with all the other waiting staff and kitchen staff etc, and then when she was asked to do a random test she came back as positive.

She was completely fine and had no symptoms at all.

She could have been positive for 1 day, 5 days, 10 days who knows?

The restaurant closed down, all staff isolated and all customers who had been there in there were contacted and informed.

Not one other staff member got symptoms or required testing and neither did any of the customers.

That waitress could have been working with the virus for many, many days, yet nobody she came into contact with during that time showed any symptoms.

Is it because she was symptomatic and couldn’t transfer it?

Was everyone just lucky?

Or did she pass it on to people but they were also asymptomatic cases?

It could also have been a false positive. The false positive rate is unknown but could be as high as 1 in every 100 tests taken.

I think you are missing the fact that many bubbles are closing due to asymptomatic cases, and the rest close due to someone having minor symptoms, at the very worst a couple of days in bed feeling rough. This is bonkers and can't go on, but eventually we will move to just the positive case isolating.

All these people noting grandparents and vulnerable people could catch it should in the large part be staying away if they care. There are however a minority of people who are older or vulnerable AND live with school aged children. I think we should be dealing with them as exceptional rather than closing bubbles who are 90% + able to protect their vulnerable family members.

To be fair at least schools are open.

@TellerTuesday4EVA

I know it makes sense but what I'm saying is if you followed the guidelines then nobody would know the child had the virus so is the system not process/guidance not flawed somewhere?

Well yes, it's flawed because you can only get tested for a minimal number of symptoms. In other countries more symptoms and more contacts can get tested, thereby picking up more of the symptom free cases.

Our system is flawed, especially for children, as it lets so many unknown cases go around spreading it in confined, over crowded, poorly ventilated rooms where there is no social distancing, etc.

As a clinically vulnerable person, despite reducing my own contacts, I caught covid most likely from a child at school. I'm now in week 5 of school absence as I slowly try to recover.