Have there been large outbreaks in schools?

[Mallowmarshmallow]

Assuming the virus was in the country from at least January and schools were open until the end of March, and key worker children have been back at school throughout lockdown (whom we might assume are at higher risk of being exposed to the virus as their parents are working in key worker roles...), has their been evidence of widespread outbreaks in schools? If so, I haven't seen about this in the news?

If not, could that contribute to an assumption that schools are not a hazardous place for either children or the teachers working within them in terms of exposure to the virus.....?

Not aware of any, anywhere in the world

In fact all the evidence is that transmission by kids is very rare

Can you please link to all the evidence please? Thanks.

I did some looking at data - this might be useful:

I've just had a look at the ONS data on deaths up to 20th April by occupation. This was a report updated on 11th May.

At that point, 66 women who were carers, had died of COVID. 32 men who were carers had died of COVID.

They are not the largest occupation group by deaths, but they are comparable for school staff - particularlt LSAs/TAs or nursery staff, or special school staff.

Anyway, that's 66 women. 12.7 deaths per 100,000.
At that point, there had been 43 deaths of woman who worked in schools - 11.6 deaths per 100,000.

For men with those 32 deaths, 32 deaths per 100,000.
For men in schools 17.9 deaths per 100,000

You can't blame teaching unions, or school staff unions for trying to protect their members with those numbers in mind - we're not very different to care home workers, and they are wearing PPE and are NOW very much in the public sphere of concern.

Of course we don't know where school staff catch it, but same could be said of doctors or care home employees.

whom we might assume are at higher risk of being exposed to the virus as their parents are working in key worker roles

I have assumed less exposed because measures were put in place to protect them. I considered vulnerable children more of a risk because feckless parenting.

Assuming the virus was in the country from at least January and schools were open until the end of March

We don't really know what was happening between January and March. There were so many bugs around - people on here are saying they think they had it back in February, or over Christmas even - schools were like TB hospitals this last winter, the coughing. They could have had it then.

Key worker children were in small bubbles, everything was cleaned continuously, as soon as one was ill or showing symptoms, bubbles were closed to check. Lots of things were in place to stop transmission, which is the whole reason why schools can't go back as normal.

How do you prove if there was an outbreak?

Just before lockdown I had the high temp, cough, raging headache symptoms but testing wasnt available. I carried on working.

Several of the children I taught had similar symptoms. Sending them home only works if a parent will accept them home which sadly isnt always the case.

Lots of us in school think we had it, but with no tests we have no way of knowing

There was a study done on an outbreak at a school in France before lockdown. Yes there have been outbreaks.
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.18.20071134v1

There were bound to have been outbreaks around schools - and any big community 'thing'. Just becaues of how the virus works. Doesn't mean schools shouldn't be open, does mean it's OK to be cautious about it.

If there are now outbreaks centred around schools right now, then that's a good thing. Measures to prevent outbreaks are working. Everyone should be happy about that, rather than use it as a reason to start immediately saying everyone back without social distancing, and scrap the bubble thing.

I've just ASKED to have my class back for some time before the end of the school year. We can only do it for a couple of days each, in smaller groups than 15 because there is nowhere to put them so I'd have to meet them in the end of a corridor or something.

NO outbreaks, not now outbreaks.

large outbreaks of hysteria....

There were a few confirmed cases in my DC’s school end of Feb/early March. It didn’t spread rapidly.

I wonder if the Pediatricians who are campaigning for schools to open and saying minimum risk wear PPE when seeing their patients?

We had a few (unconfirmed) but teachers only, no pupils as far as I am aware. To be honest, in the last days the schools were open it was incredibly stressful and very, very busy. I know lots were off but a lot of these were because of the 7 day isolation thing in cold season.

Given that many families and schools travelled to Europe for ski trips and holidays abroad over half term, I would be very surprised if the virus was not prevalent in the weeks following this particularly in London and the SE where the virus peaked first.

the last days the schools were open it was incredibly stressful and very, very busy

I lost almost a stone in those last 2 weeks. Was ridiculous.

There are figures here for the number of "outbreaks" per week. To count as an "outbreak" at least 2 people within the setting must test positive. 12 in schools in latest set of data, and 21 in hospitals. Last week figures were 9 and 31, respectively. So they do need lots of wriggle room to open schools.

www.gov.uk/government/news/weekly-covid-19-surveillance-report-published

OP, you refer to schools having been open until the end of March, but schools were actually closed to pupils other than key worker children etc on Friday, 20 March. In the week commencing 16 March there were already lots of pupils and staff not going in due to self-isolation rules etc, to the point that some schools had to close due to lack of staff. So I think the last week that you could reasonably regard schools as having operated normally was the w/c 9 March.

really interested in the conclusion of this.

Barbie222

Hadn't seen this source of data before. Really helpful. Thanks.

Another important point to bear in mind is that although there may have been individual cases of the virus which reached the UK before February, the numbers were very small. Italy was approximately 2 weeks ahead of the UK on the virus curve, but in February the virus was still perceived as enough of a non-issue for UK schools to be running ski trips to Italy. Because of the exponential way in which case numbers increase, it's easy to forget that case numbers went from very small numbers to very big numbers very quickly!

It's not the kids giving it to me I'm worried about - it's other staff! I have a Year 10 bubble once a week but I'm in school a fair amount. Today I only saw students through a screen but I had meetings with about 7 separate people throughout the day, plus staff in the staff room and tradespeople in the corridors. We're distancing as best we can but it feels all but pointless and all we have is hand sanitiser. Luckily we've only had a couple of confirmed staff cases but it all feels a bit precarious.

We don't just work with kids!

We have 5 pods of children in the school o work in, 2 pods were sent home today sue to suspected cases within their pods.

24 outbreaks were from hospitals where 21 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2

24 outbreaks were from schools where 12 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2

Yet in hospitals everyone now has to wear a mask all the time, even if you're even a COVID-clean building or just there for an ingrowing toenail. Schools, no PPE.

So whilst cases are decreasing in hospitals they are rising in schools.
Hopefully this will be monitored carefully but I think those calling for schools to scrap social distancing and getting back to normal need to understand the risks this would bring.

@starrynight19

So whilst cases are decreasing in hospitals they are rising in schools. Hopefully this will be monitored carefully but I think those calling for schools to scrap social distancing and getting back to normal need to understand the risks this would bring.

Could not agree more.

This is interesting. I know it's not about COVID, more about respiratory stuff in general, but it doesn't fit with everything (anecdotally) teachers are saying about schools before closure. We know there was definitely a massive flu thing going on before Christmas - loads of kids and staff off really ill. Jan - March felt just as bad, but clearly it wasn't for real. Or maybe not bad enough to go to the doctors. Anyway.