Parents! Please don’t send your kid to school with a cough or temperature

[noblegiraffe]

We’ll have to send them home again, and that’s a whole lot of hassle that could have easily been avoided by parents following the government advice.

No, you don’t get to decide whether the cough or a fever is ‘simply a cold’. Neither do we. Just follow the guidelines please.

Apart from anything, it’s freaking their classmates out and we can really do without stressing out the kids even more about this.

Thank you.

The continuous bit means is it a cough or did they just choke on their breakfast. The schools should not be put into this situation; if a child has a cough , however severe, they have to stay at home.

That’s not what the advice says.

It says “continuous” cough (not defined).

i’Il keep her home if it persists tomorrow but as of right now it's pretty much non existent

No. You keep her home. Full stop.

People talking about how well China handled this. It’s because it’s not a democracy, if people didn’t follow the rules there they went to prison.

Here, people like @Bedsheets4knickers can’t follow basic rules as they think they’re a special exemption case. This is why we are where we are and why Italy is where it is.

Eden if you don’t think your child has coronavirus, the fewer bugs in circulation the better for the elderly and immuno-compromised, surely?

My dc was sent home with a cough last Tuesday, it hasn’t gone and two others in my family started it Friday so we are self isolating for 7 days.

The US charts the papers/Facebook etc are showing saying it can’t be coronavirus if no fever are unhelpful.

People are overthinking - cough or fever, self isolate for 7 days. It doesn’t have to be coronavirus to be worth not passing on at this point.

Is it new cough since they changed the advice on Thursday/Friday?
Or new cough since all this began to get big a few weeks ago?

People are asking what it means on social media too: NHS not answering.

111 have not explained, nor are they telling anyone with any cough to SaH.

GP on radio earlier says it means frequent coughing bouts with V little break between coughs/bouts.

The government has put schools in an impossible situation! I teach year 1 and about 12 kids in my class have a cough... this is nothing unusual and I don't know how we are meant to make the decision!

There’s no decision. Send them home

Parents don't want to pick them up
Tough

I think if they are in and we've been together all week we probably have it anyway

It’s not about you. It’s not about them. It’s about society now

Government needs to take those kinds of decisions, liveinside. If, however, schools send every DC who coughs at all home, that will be a de facto shutdown.

My dc school sent a letter home Friday saying unless they have a diagnosis of covid or have a cough and a fever higher than 37.8 then they should be in school.

@Dozer using my common sense I would say that a cough because food went down the wrong way is not continuous. It’s a one off thing.

They have made that decision @dozer. What do you mean?

No it won’t shut down schools. My child isn’t coughing. Plenty aren’t. Some are. Plenty won’t have Corona. Some will

My dc school sent a letter home Friday saying unless they have a diagnosis of covid or have a cough and a fever higher than 37.8 then they should be in school.

Absolutely madness. You can't get a test, and therefore diagnosis unless you're in hospital, and if you're in hospital you're not going to be in school.

Government have not reported that they have advised schools to send all DC coughing, at all, home.

aswellaslocal “continuous” doesn’t just mean “more than once”. Otherwise the advice would say “coughs more than once or twice”. It’s ambiguous and open to interpretation.

The gov.uk advice here, which just says “continuous cough” with no definition has a feedback form. www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-stay-at-home-guidance/stay-at-home-guidance-for-people-with-confirmed-or-possible-coronavirus-covid-19-infection

I took my 2yo to nursery on Friday and one of the staff was coughing everywhere so now my 2yo is coughing and I'm keeping her home but isolation still involves sharing her home with her sister and brother and us so I can't understand why you would put peoples whole families through this.

If you have a chance of spreading anything please stay in.

Realistically people are going to send their children, it drives me mad in normal circumstances the level of sick children sent Into school with no consideration to others

be easier to just close the schools and have done with it

@Oswin I find that very hard to believe.

Our guidance is if a child has as much as a sniffle then they go home for 7 days. I really don’t care if parents are pissed off about it. They will go home.

No bemoreeverything - the advice came out before I picked him up - when I collected him the school handed me a sheet of the new guidance , I asked if he was ok over the weekend could he come back in to school Monday - they said it was up to me , and to ring 111 if I wanted advice. It was a sickness bug, 24 hour usual thing, he now has no temp, no sickness no cough whatsoever.
But according to the guidance it’s 7 days.
But school says he’s fine to go back in Monday.
(Their rules are 48 hours).

Who has issued that guidance, purplecrocus? Not government.

The problem with shutting schools is that the people who think the rules don't apply to them will just carry on doing whatever they want. My DS had a a temp on Thursday evening, fine again the next morning but he will be off for the next week as per the advice. I know it's inconvenient but surely less inconvenient than people dying.

@Doser our LA and I will follow it to the letter.

Do you suspect schools will officially close next week? If so, how long for

To be honest, I think the official advice is a deliberate get out of jail free card.

They have chosen NOT to clarify that parents who CAN withdraw their children (healthy or otherwise) from school should do so.
They should have issued the categorical advice that IF you CAN, take your child out, now.
Instead, they have issued advice that allows any parent savvy enough to understand the implications and need for social distancing, to effectively self-certify their child out of school for a week without need for verifying the cough or the temperature with a doctor.
Perhaps they are hoping that enough parents will realise this is a get out clause, which allows parents who CAN to take their children out, and parents who CAN'T, to continue working uninhibited for a while longer before all schools close anyway.
Removing children that can be removed, healthy or not, will reduce the speed of spread for everyone.

No headteacher will challenge a parent following govt advice in a time of national emergency. Noone is going to turn up on the doorstep with a thermometer.

This will all seem like such a trivial problem in a couple of weeks when the enormity hits.

the advice came out before I picked him up - when I collected him the school handed me a sheet of the new guidance

My mistake - I got my days mixed up!