Are you sending your kids to school or nursery with a cold?

[Courtney10891]

Hi guys,

My son has had a cold since Monday so we are now on day 6. Just snotty really hit the past couple days he has been coughing too. He's meant to start nursery on Monday. One of my friends said I shouldn't send him in if he's a bit snotty. The thing is if my son is anything like he was last winter he will have a cold every other week! Surely I can't keep him off every time he has a cold. What would you do?

@MerryMarigold

But currently very little is identifying other than a high temperature. A coughing episode is not identifying at all.

Some children with covid get a cough. Maybe an even smaller percentage of them have a continuous cough that lasts for 10 minutes at a time. I think the aim is to identify more cases of covid than less though?

DD was in last week with a cold, luckily it was worse in the evenings so she wasn't sneezing everywhere at school. As PP have said, if I keep her off for every snotty nose she'll never be in. Adding potentially isolating if other DC in her class test positive she'd miss too much school.

DD1 (12) has been off this week with a cold but only because it's totally laid her out and she would have been no good at school. A lesser cold and she would have been in as normal.

At my school we definitely want them in with just colds. Any temp or a cough that isn't recognisable to the parent (not asthma or croup cough that they know well) and they need to stay off.

If we want to keep schools/nurseries open and stay out of lockdown we need more testing, not to narrow testing as much as possible.

Any child who is ill with common symptoms - fever, sore throat, headache, cough, gastro symptoms (and in many studies runny noses have been identified as a very common symptom in children, though for some reason it's not being included here) - should be tested.

Since 2/3 children don't have any symptoms, all the close contacts of positive cases should be traced and tested too.

Unfortunately we don't have a functioning test and trace system yet, hence cases are spreading out of control and Boris is mumbling about second waves and increasing restrictions.

My concern is that very soon we won't have a choice about whether we send unwell children to school or not as they will all be closed again.

Children often have diarrhoea as a Covid symptom too so keep a close eye on that

Any child who is ill with common symptoms - fever, sore throat, headache, cough, gastro symptoms (and in many studies runny noses have been identified as a very common symptom in children, though for some reason it's not being included here) - should be tested.
Since 2/3 children don't have any symptoms, all the close contacts of positive cases should be traced and tested too.

@Mippi, yes of course in an ideal world, or maybe Germany. But as things stand, you can't get a test because people are running to test centres for every tiny symptom. So if staff and their children are to stay off for every tiny symptom, schools/ nurseries/ preschools will need to close immediately. They just can't run on the staff that would be available if we all took time off for a sore throat, runny nose or resultant cough from a cold.

@overtherainbow88 I posted to her other people's opinions. From what I can see a lot of people agree with me that it is ridiculous to keep children off school for every cold. Why should my child be punished because the government are doing such a shit job with the testing. He's been off for 7 months now.

Mine are going in for a cold.

If its chesty/phlegmy cough then its fine and pretty normal during/after runny nose etc. The Covid cough is dry, so quite different. People shouldn't be using up tests for what are normal cold symptoms. My son had a bad runny nose this week, he stayed off school for a day just to rest as he had a bad night with no sleep due to stuffed up nose. He was fine in about 72hrs.

@Courtney10891 I absolutely agree. My older son only has a bit of a runny nose. He was so happy to be back at school his mood has improved. I’m not keeping him off because his brother has a bit of a cough with his cold and there are no tests to help me out with that decision. I’d keep them off for a couple of days to wait for results. Not 14 days.

Obviously if the symptoms were obviously more than just a cold then I would.