Counting down the days (as are they).
Can’t understand anyone who wouldn’t send them back unless someone in the immediate family is shielding and even then the evidence base does not support
Article below from Times today.
Scientists are yet to find a single confirmed case of a teacher catching coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the world, a leading epidemiologist has said.
Mark Woolhouse, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Edinburgh University, offered reassurance to staff preparing for the full reopening of schools next month.
Professor Woolhouse, a member of the UK government’s scientific advisory group, Sage, said that in hindsight closing schools in March was probably a mistake, but the limited role children play in spreading the virus only became clear further along the infection curve.
He said: “One thing we have learnt is that children are certainly, in the five to 15 brackets from school to early years, are minimally involved in the epidemiology of this virus.
“They are probably less susceptible and vanishingly unlikely to end up in hospital or to die from it.
“There is increasing evidence that they rarely transmit. For example, it is extremely difficult to find any instance anywhere in the world a single example of a child transmitting to a teacher in school. There may have been one in Australia but it is incredibly rare.
“There are certain environments where this virus transmits very well, and children are not present in these environments.”
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, announced schools would close in Scotland on March 18.
The announcement was the first sign of divergence from the four nations’ action plan, sparking tensions with some Conservative ministers accusing Ms Sturgeon of jumping the gun and backing Boris Johnson into a corner.
The prime minister announced UK school closures later that day, but Ms Sturgeon was henceforth locked out of decisions previously taken on a four-nations basis through Cobra, the UK government’s emergency planning committee, according to reports.
She was subsequently blindsided on several UK government announcements, including a decision to massively scale up testing in Scottish laboratories, and set up her own Covid-19 scientific advisory group at the end of March.
Professor Woolhouse said the knowledge that children do not widely transmit Covid-19 was “very hard won”.
He said: “We had to go into full lockdown while we accumulated this information.
“For example, most governments in Europe now recognise that stopping children playing outside was not needed, and most governments will probably now say that going to school as normal is safe. We can use that information in the future.
“It is also important to recognise that it has not become safe now, because the virus has changed. Those things were always safe but we didn’t know.
“These things were never essential as part of lockdown, although there are other things around that activity that you might worry about, but at their heart they weren’t necessary so we must use that information going forward.”
Gabriel Scally, of the epidemiology and public health section of the Royal Society of Medicine, said reopening schools should have been one of the priorities of lifting lockdown. He said: “I think it is a real indictment of our society that we can open pubs and nail bars but we can’t open schools.”
Schools are expected to return full-time with no social distancing on August 11. Unions have demanded protection measures for teachers. The Scottish government and education unions were contacted for comment.