Coronovirus IS transmitted in schools

[mosquitofeast]

And lots of teachers have died

I am just clarifying this, as I don't know how many times I have read on Mumsnet that this has never happened. I don't know where this misinformation is coming from, but its rubbish

It was transmitted several hundred times in my school (secondary)before lock down. Hundreds of children and dozens of staff were affected. Some have been seriously ill and have been left with long term health problems, such as low lung capacity and loss of hearing.

I am a teacher and I was infected at school. I did not use public transport, or go into any shops or other businesses for the whole of March, and I was living alone. The only time I was in any contact with anyone else was in school

A school near us (also secondary) had to close a week before school closures were announced, as so many teachers were infected.

Thankfully, no staff or student in our school died, although several students have lost parents, and many have lost grandparents. One of my sixthformers has withdrawn her university application as her mum has lost a lung and a leg and now can't run her home and care for her younger children on her own.

However, according to the union, around 200 school staff have dies to date, so we have just been lucky so far.

So please don't repost this fake news that "no one has ever caught covid in a school" - because |I have watched it happen in front of my eyes, and experienced it myself.

@finallyrelief so sorry to hear this. Must have been really worrying. I too have a friend whose 13 year old was hospitalised with PIMMS. Unfortunately there will be more cases once schools open 😔

@sonicbook I’m not in Scotland. I know you were not the OP. Things work very different if you could merge 4/5 schools together into one and create bubbles.
A lot of people used the hubs here.

Yes you know they are 1200 kids at school but you don’t know how things will go yet do you once the children go back is what I was getting at.

@BoggledBudgie

Oh boohoo, poor you.

look, this sort of post is a really bad idea when people are talking about family illness and possibly death. I don't know who this is directed at, but maybe we could discuss things as adults and just be a bit kinder.

The headlines on BBC and Sky referring to “little evidence of transmission in school” makes me want to scream! Of course there is little evidence whole schools haven’t been in since March!! As I’ve said before more attention grabbing headlines to put teachers in a bad light because a large proportion of population in England (uk actually) just go along with what the Government say as though it’s gospel! Don’t have a science based degree or anything near but this Coronavirus is so clever it chooses not to transmit in schools, stops at the school gates just like a protective ring around them. Oh wait where have we heard that term “protective ring”...Care Homes. Not for one minute suggesting schools will create a death rate like seen in care homes but let’s hope schools are not the next cause of exponential growth of coronavirus.

I know of a school who was selected to be part of the sKIDs COVID-19 surveillance in school. Data was never collected as there was no one medically trained to conduct the swabs! Arguments occurred between local health teams of who was funding a nurse(s) to conduct the tests.

@fwwaftp

Please provide a link to a source describing this outbreak of hundreds of cases in one school.

On 13 March 2020, Israel’s government declared closure of all schools. Schools fully reopened on 17 May 2020. Ten days later, a major outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) occurred in a high school. The first case was registered on 26 May, the second on 27 May. They were not epidemiologically linked. Testing of the complete school community revealed 153 students (attack rate: 13.2%) and 25 staff members (attack rate: 16.6%) who were COVID-19 positive.

www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.29.2001352

178 in total. Not ‘hundreds’ though so maybe not high enough for you.

I agree with you OP but I dont know what the answer is. There are very few other people being asked to work in cramped ,badly ventilated rooms with 30 odd people in them. Shop workers, bus drivers, hairdressers perhaps. I'm not surprised you are worried but I dont know what the answer is. Really good online learning mixed with teaching in school with very small class sizes and masks worn by children? Or is it better to hope as many of us get it as possible for herd immunity? I just dont know.

Why does ANYONE believe ANY of the lies that this government peddles - anymore ... Why?

Chances of catching coronavirus from a surface if you wash your hands thoroughly before touching your face are extremely low. Chances of catching coronavirus through prolonged proximity with large numbers of people in a room with poor ventilation are considerably higher. It’s kind of funny that one of the “protections” in schools is to have all the kids sitting in rows facing the teacher, so that all their coughs can be directed at the person most at risk .

Every other profession in the world : okay we're going back! Let's sort safety precautions ✅ ppe ✅ social distancing ✅ reduced numbers of public ✅

Teaching profession according to @Bananabread8 : let's just see how it goes 🙄

The death rate is not the issue though, is it.

This! I don;t understand how people aren't seeing that just because you aren't dead from COVID means you are ok. I work for the NHS (as a social worker) and have seen hundreds of people get and COVID and at least 50% of those continue to have ongoing issues - I'm talking colleagues, service users, family and friends.

I've been working throughout lockdown but I am NOT allowed in the office, I am NOT allowed in the hospital and I have to wear full PPE to go in to care homes. This is by order of my hospital trust. Because they don't want people to catch it. Because they know the longer term implications with regard to health and people's ability to return to work. It isn't just 2 weeks off for a lot of people. Average time between positive and negative test at our trust is 17 days.

Anyway:

Boris Johnson will be visiting a classroom this morning to emphasise the message that it’s safe for schools to reopen.

From the Guardian live feed. This made me chuckle.

@CKBJ

The headlines on BBC and Sky referring to “little evidence of transmission in school” makes me want to scream! Of course there is little evidence whole schools haven’t been in since March!! As I’ve said before more attention grabbing headlines to put teachers in a bad light because a large proportion of population in England (uk actually) just go along with what the Government say as though it’s gospel! Don’t have a science based degree or anything near but this Coronavirus is so clever it chooses not to transmit in schools, stops at the school gates just like a protective ring around them. Oh wait where have we heard that term “protective ring”...Care Homes. Not for one minute suggesting schools will create a death rate like seen in care homes but let’s hope schools are not the next cause of exponential growth of coronavirus.

I know of a school who was selected to be part of the sKIDs COVID-19 surveillance in school. Data was never collected as there was no one medically trained to conduct the swabs! Arguments occurred between local health teams of who was funding a nurse(s) to conduct the tests.

....schools haven't been in since March..."

Further to this, the approach for many weeks was that it was almost impossible to get tested if you had symptoms. So infections were almost never confirmed., unless one were hospitalised, in the early days of infection, when prevalence was at its highest. In this situation, it ain't surprising that we have little data to confirm transmission in schools.

I would imagine that there is "little evidence" of COVID transmission in schools precisely because no one was looking for it there or testing in Jan/Feb/March. There is plenty of evidence of it spreading in Israel's schools , give it a week or two and there'll be plenty of evidence from the States. I know British exceptionalism is practically the state religion but seriously, why would it not spread in schools? Because it's not convenient?

Redolent since the op is avoiding the question

Given that schools locked down at 104 deaths, what op describes would have happened when it was lower, how likely is it that op’s school experienced that number of deaths?

Israel had one hospitalisation but op describes many bad outcomes

The school you quote made world news, but op’s school with hundreds, nothing? Not a link or other poster saying the same

"From the Guardian live feed. This made me chuckle"

But will he shake hands while he's there!

This has to be highlighted and repeated.

I know British exceptionalism is practically the state religion but seriously, why would it not spread in schools? Because it's not convenient?

I really don't understand why teachers are not being provided with face shields. Why are people so happy to let teachers be put at risk?

Probably will get back lash from this but here goes .... shop workers worked all the way through this and never complained /my partner a key worker also I could go on .. if you don't want to send your kids to school de register them and home school if you don't want to go in a teach resign !!! This virus is going no where and

**200 teachers is a lot of deaths.

and 10x more teachers than that have been left incapacitated

and 100 x more have resigned over safety fears.

So according to to you

2000 teachers left incapacitated and 20,000 have left the profession?

Job vacancy rates would contradict that

@pontypridd

Anyway:

Boris Johnson will be visiting a classroom this morning to emphasise the message that it’s safe for schools to reopen.

From the Guardian live feed. This made me chuckle.

Presumably it is safer if the school is shut and there aren't any pupils there? Let#s hope he doesn't shake anyone's hand!

"The death rate is not the issue though ,is it."
@mosquitofeast you claimed on this thread the mortality rate is 100x flu then a few posts later say the death rate is not the issue! If it was actually x100 mortality rate of flu then it would be a bloody big issue. Your posts are very dramatic. If you were a more rational people would listen to your points more.

This virus is going no where !!!!! Get back to work or resign !!! From what I heard of my neighbour yesterday who is a headteacher she had no problem going back and teachers that can't wait to go back

Covid was present in my children's secondary school before lockdown. That is a fact

As quite a few people have pointed out now - measures HAVE been put at place in schools. My children’s primary school has made huge changes in order to keep the children and staff as safe as they can within the remit of a contagious virus. Of course there isn’t zero risk. That’s impossible Just as there isn’t zero risk to catching norovirus, measles, chicken pox, gastric flu etc.

If you are shielding or vulnerable and feel unhappy at teaching then I suggest you resign. That’s not ideal but this is a pandemic and no one is in an ideal situation. If you do not fall into any of the categories which the last few months have proved would place you in a higher risk category IF you contact COVID-19 then can’t you get on with your job and your life? We know more about covid now than we did in March when it, frankly, ripped through this country, and we know it’s more likely to have an adverse outcome if you are very elderly, are obese, have diabetes and other underlying conditions. Even in those cases you are not guaranteed an adverse outcome, your risk of it increases. Treatment has improved and death rates have been falling for months despite the reopening of society.
Parents are as much as risk of catching covid as teachers. If it’s as contagious as you say then if Jonny breathes on the teacher and Adam then Adam goes home and infects his parents as well as the teacher. I don’t particularly want to catch covid, no I don’t. But I think it’s futile to shield from it for the rest of our lives. The emotional and financial consequences of children not resuming their education are ENORMOUS. Studies of children whose education have been disrupted in warzones show they may never recover. Parents NEED children back to help the economy function. The economy means lives - a massive recession hits us all and lowers overall life expectancy etc (this is all well documented).

If you are not in a vulnerable category stop scaremongering, get a grip and do your job. Schools HAVE made changes. Nurseries have been open for WEEKS with no social distancing, close contact with children etc and nursery staff haven’t been dropping like flies. Pp have a said ‘nurseries are smaller’ , well my child is in a nursery with nearly 30 children. Those staff are helping feed these children, helping change their clothes, helping change their nappies. No PPE nothing and strangely enough they’re not all dead. And neither am I despite the fact two of my children have been mingling with 30 children and their parents’ worth of potential virus carriers.
I think I had it in March, along with my husband. And weirdly enough we’re not even teachers! I think we caught it commuting into London. Teachers are not the only people exposed to the virus (so even if op caught it at school so what? So did A LOT of people in this country purely by interacting with society.)
This country is a major transport hub with literally hundreds of flights from China and Europe coming in during Jan/ Feb/ March. The virus flooded this country. This is why we had a high death rate because EVERYBODY was exposed. Now we know much much more and are interacting generally speaking much less. Cases have dropped and we need to open the schools!

Shop workers were protected by changes in working g practices weren't they though @TrindleGin? Social distancing, restricting the nu.bers in shops, perspex barriers at the till, frequent cleaning. Which of these are schools getting?