70 cases in French schools since reopening

[Hippywannabe]

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Mum and aunt are teachers in France (year 10 and year 1), so I thought I would share what I know:

• Only a minority of kids back at schools for now.
• Local areas classified as red or green depending on level of infection.
• social distancing at all times (inside/outside).
• teachers to wear masks.
• high school pupils to wear masks.
• each morning access to classroom on an individual basis (each kid goes through school gate alone, washes hands, goes to classroom individually and when he/she is in classroom next kid can go through school gate and so on).
• 15 kids per classroom max.
• classrooms ventilated for at least 10 mins, at least 3 times a day.
• pupils stay in one classroom.
• no access to shared facilities (eg microwave).
• lunch break outside.
• when possible teaching done outside.
• entire school closes if Covid case.

Life is literally never utterly "safe"

We're firmly in Aunt Lydia "freedom from" territory now with some of these people.

It's chilling.

entire school closes if Covid case.
Well that is the education of the next generation nadgered then
insane

COVID is here to stay
the tests have large numbers of false positives and false negatives
a vaccine will be very unlikely to be long lasting (as none have been for other coronaviruses)

so do we just lock everybody up at home going broke till ..... what exactly

The R number is likely nearly 1 in some parts of the country but lower in London.

@Bipette79

I think this is a sensible and safe way to reopen our schools. If our government suggested the same, I am almost certain a lot of teachers would be happy returning to work on June 1st - I know I would be one of them.

I am increasingly annoyed at the line we keep hearing from the government in terms of vulnerable pupils. Schools have always been open to these pupils and head teachers have discretion to admit pupils to the current provision as they see fit. We know not a lot of those pupils are in attendance at the moment and are working hard to get them in, however, if attendance isn't compulsory what makes them think all of a sudden these vulnerable pupils will start rocking up to the school gates on 1st June?

Also, on the importance of our youngest pupils coming in - the government claim thy have bene chosen because it is important for the youngest learners to have their personal, social and emotional wellbeing met - if this is the case, do they agree testing a 4 year old within the first 6 weeks of entry to school and using this data as a basis to produce progress predictions for them in Year 6 probably isn't going to support their emotional or mental wellbeing?

The R number is likely nearly 1 in some parts of the country but lower in London.
How do you know?
So few people have been accurately tested we have no idea
remember that LOTS of people show almost no symptoms

v low !

70 out of 1.4 million kids. That’s a very low stat. Which is what was to be expected.

Not Surprised some folks are still running around with their pants on their head panicking, even though they have the option to keep their kids home.

I just don’t get why they want every one else to.

I don't understand why we just don't test all teachers and children from the chosen year groups before 1st June. If we have the capacity to carry out over 100,000, surely we could do this before then?

If I have it then I self isolate and the same goes for any pupils and therefore there is less chance of it spreading?

I don't understand why we just don't test all teachers and children from the chosen year groups before 1st June. If we have the capacity to carry out over 100,000, surely we could do this before then?
Today is May 18th
so there are 13 days left in the month
100,000 x 13 = 1,300,000

there are 500,000 pupils in EVERY year group (yr R to Yr 12 = 13 year groups)
there are over 500,000 teachers in the UK
and the TAs and admin staff and cooks

so around 10,000,000 people to be vaccinated
ie around 8 times more than we are currently managing

and that assumes stopping testing all NHS and care home staff

Giving up and just letting the virus spread is just not an option. So we're stuck with adjusting our behaviour, testing, tracking etc. Testing isn't perfect but should improve. Knowledge of how the virus works and the disease progress will improve. But those things will work. We can get rates low, and track where the disease is,and behave in ways that reduce transmission. We don't have to keep schools closed forever to do that, but neither is there anything special about June 1st in particular, or about the particular classes going back first.

It's fine to want your children to go back then, and it's fine not to want to. Neither is wrong.

The government, on the other hand, might be wrong in telling us it's fine on June 1st in particular, might be underestimating how risky it is from the point of view of restarting rapid transmission, might have picked classes based on childcare rather than public health... I don't know. I'm not convinced it's quite right, even if the basic idea of trying to get schools functioning for more pupils is good.

Giving up and just letting the virus spread is just not an option
Its already happened.

Letting it spread more is not an option then.

@ListeningQuietly surely it's better for us to start testing though? My school will have a capacity of 50% running and some staff will be working from home or shielding.

There are also school who are not opening on June 1st around the country so whilst I completely agree this will be a difficult task, it's better than having nothing in place?

If you worked on the basis of 50% of the figures you quoted and also took into account that some schools will be opening later I think we could make a big dent in testing those going into schools.

That's a really, really low number.

R stats in uk are avail online and are 0.4 for London at moment. Highest rate is north east at .83

That suggests to me that wave is moving across country and If it is falling in busy London that is a positive

R stats in uk are avail online and are 0.4 for London at moment. Highest rate is north east at .83
But they are based on so few accurate tests as to be utterly meaningless.

BertNErnie
IMHO every teacher and TA should be offered a weekly test so that they know if they have had it, have it or are at risk of it.
And that contact tracing should be vigorous if it comes into a school
but keeping the schools open is really important for many kids

Meaningless?! It’s what the world is working with!

Letting it spread more is not an option then.

Exactly. It's not an option, it's a given.

It will spread more and we can take measures to control it. And they must be proportional to the risks of further spread and balanced against the harms of the measures.

nih

What rubbish. You clearly haven't looked around you at how other countries have successfully tackled the spread. The measures taken must be adequate to tackle the spread, full stop. Unfortunately those measures have to be drastic or it makes no difference. Please stop thinking of yourself for one moment and consider the key workers and their families who will continue to die if adequate measures aren't taken.

The Countries that have tackled the spread well (Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong) have done so by acting early and thoroughly.
The countries that have tackled it badly (New Zealand) have just shut themseslves in a cupboard.
THe countries that did not tackle the spread in time now have to live with it
and was was pointed out to the MPs today
its all over the world now, its here to stay
we have to live with it
as we do the other coronaviruses

There will be no effective vaccine
There is just better infection control ( getting men to wash their hands after having a piss and before touching food would be nice )
and adequate resourcing of healthcare

You don't know there will be no vaccine. Or do you have inside knowledge? And is this your area of expertise? If not, you have no way of predicting what an unprecedented global push with limitless resources will do. We haven't ever tried to get a vaccine in anything like this way before. Scientists everywhere acknowledge this. How do you know there is no hope? Please tell me.

We haven't ever tried to get a vaccine in anything like this way before.
SARS
MERS
Human corona viruses
none successful yet ......

Locking yourself in a cupboard is an odd way to describe saving 30 000 people from a horrendous death and countless others from long term damage. I acknowledge the difficulties in the position but still.... It's an odd way to describe something that has saved so many lives. As if you can't see any up side to that or why it might be liberating for anyone at all... Odd.

Right. So you don't know what you're talking about.

Fine.

For the benefit of others reading, there has never been an effort like this to find a vaccine. It's unprecedented. It certainly didn't happen with other corona viruses and especially not the ones mentioned above (some of which were successfully dealt with by other means first so of course the quest for a vaccine didn't continue).

Listening Do some research.