Risk to under 20’s

[Alex50]

So five people have died from Covid who are under 20 so far in the UK, 3 of those had under lying health issues, so only 2 with unknown health issue have died. There are over 4 million school age children in the UK. Do you think children are at risk if they return to school? Children are the least at risk category, surely a strategy should be put in place so they can return to school?

If it's not safe for them to go back to school then it's not safe for them to go anywhere. Parks, beaches, soft play, to play sports, meet friends, see family.

Children won't be able to socially distance and children ye alternative to to lock them up until there's a vaccination, if there ever is one.

We do need much more data but so far the covid specific data does seem to be weighing towards low spread and infection in children. If, big if, that continues to be the case then it becomes hard to justify keeping them out of education and socially isolated. Socially distance schooling sounds like a horrible option in most cases, and still detrimental (probably only going to school 1/3 of the time, being expected to distance from those in schools).

We don’t have enough information to answer these questions yet.

Of the children you know who ‘had it’ with mild symptoms OP how many were actually tested?

We don’t know how many people of any age have had it overall, other than the numbers tested.

Also they do know adults can give it to kids. So a teacher infecting their pupils.

Tbh i think most kids would prefer to go back when it's not risking the teachers life.
Everyone at my school remembers when our teacher died of a brain aneurism. (And when my friend died in a car accident).
Ive seen at least 3 teacher deaths (whether they caught it from school who knoows), but again they could have passed it on at school.

Low spread and low infection in children would be great news - we have to be careful in looking at how they define ‘children’ as it may mean that secondary needs to be treated differently to primary.

@Chocolatecakeandpinkcustardi don’t get why the abuse for just asking questions about schools going back? Maybe it’s the fear factor for some, even the thought of children going back to school is to much to bare

Yes teachers could pass it to kids - although a study in China found only 4% of children living in a house where someone had covid actually caught it. So that risk might - might - be fairly low too.

But what is the risk to teachers? We don’t know, how many have actually died from coronvirus?

Google nhs covid statistics.
Theres age race etc on the spreadsheet.

I also think the government need to be much clearer on our aim here!
Understatement of the year. But at some point the rhetoric will need to change. The PHE adverts about a 'National Emergency' and 'serious for all ages groups' have scared many people witless. We have had parents phone our school insisting that it doesn't re open until its 100% safe/everyone is tested regualarly etc.

These people believe we have to hide away from this killer virus. Not everyone looks at statistics, weighs up risks or questions the governement 'plan'.
I was surprised when contact tracing and mass testing became part of the plan again tbh

@Lumene no we don’t know but having children locked away won’t give us answers either, surely we should start getting small numbers back to school and start testing and find out?

Alex50 maybe look into diseases a bit. How they are spread for a start. Then go back and read the 100s of articles/videos explaining that exposing everyone at once will overwhelm the NHS.

For one thing no one has said children can't catch the virus. Only that they are more likely to survive. Your "I never said they don’t spread it, I said we don’t know" is simply wrong.

Basically the people who do know how it works are trying to save lives.

if you look on Worldometer stats it is still saying that not one child under age of 10 has died from Covid19. I know UK has had some but also interesting how the stories disappear. There was one week where a9 month old became youngest Covid victim and next week a 5 year old was youngest victim, suggesting the 9 month old did not sure of Covid. I would say it is incredibly unlikely that children will be severely ill with Covid. I think schools should go back before summer with the caveat that high risk pupils ( or those with high risk parents)can be supported at home, possibly by sheilding teachers who can do on line teaching with those pupils. FWIW, I name a team in a local acute hospital working with Covid and 4 of my team have asthma including myself. Although we would only work on Covid wards if rest of team were not around, we do sometimes have to cover and I recently had to cover a day in A&E too. What I am trying to say it's that I think people think that some conditions put you at very high risk but it is on an individual case basis and asthma per se is not high risk unless you are on high doses of steroids and have poorly controlled asthma.

"Even criminals in prison having committed heinous crimes are given outside access for fresh air and exercise daily." Ah the mistake you're making there Ouchy is in thinking they are being kept in as a punishment. An easy mistake to make I'm sure. Just read up on it a bit. I'm sure there are some articles explaining about the virus going around.

It's not just teachers, though. It's all school staff and visiting professionals. So even if we knew the total number of teacher deaths, we'd have to also factor in all the admin staff, teaching assistants, catering staff, maintenance, cleaners, therapists, sports coaches etc.

We definitely need more tests, and teachers are now eligible to be tested if they have symptoms, but they ran out of tests within a hour or two yesterday. And that's just 46,000 key workers, never mind 4 million children. We're a long way off routine testing in schools, I feel.

Does anyone have any overall numbers of teachers who have being teaching in schools who have died of coronvirus? Maybe then we can judge the risk?

Ugghh, the assumptions behind this line of reasoning is frustrating because surely the fact that loads of teachers and school staff have NOT dropped dead from coronavirus is a direct result of shutting the schools and social distancing, and not, as your query suggests, a reason as to why it wasn't necessary in the first place. Our mortality numbers are "o.k." because we have locked down, and for the most part, people are complying. You only have to glance across the pond to see what happens when wishy-washy measures are put in place.

vdbfamily you got the bit about the kids surviving it just fine, but passing it around to the entire population right?

Of course the plan is to send them back to school. Everyone wants them back at school. but they have to ease lockdown in stages and wait to see how fast the death rate goes up.

So because there are not statistics on how many teachers have died from covid-19 we should open the schools back up? 🙄

@Vagndidit that’s because the only numbers we have is from deaths, as tests haven’t been done, that is the only way we can tell what the risks are.

Agree OP. There was a study by Imperial College London recently published in the Guardian which suggested that school closures, especially if done later in a pandemic, have little effect.

You mean this limited study. Read all the tweets it actually tells us nothing and wasn't covered up don't lie. It just doesn't say much

twitter.com/drsamsims/status/1247445729439895555?s=21

@Sophj19 that isn’t what I said

So keeping over 4 million children locked up from months on end is the other option? Why can’t there be a half way point where we start gathering data?

surely we should start getting small numbers back to school and start testing and find out?

Or we could wait and watch what happens in other countries who have already got small numbers back into school and who aren’t so hopeless regarding testing and tracing?

I disagree and think clearly asthma is high risk.
It's just our population has a number of people with severe health issues (elderly/obese/high bp/cancer).
Asthma is higher than the average risk for age group. It is literally that there are so many people who are higher risk that you can't exactly shield another x million asthmatics.
(Or millions with high bp etc and diabetes).

If the schools don't reopen I will not be keeping my children locked inside until September.

Same here. Worst case scenario, we will pick one or two low-risk families to start mixing with. Most other people will be doing the same, by the way, regardless of whether they admit this on here.