Schools told NOT TO TELL PARENTS if someone tests positive for Covid

[Charliede1182]

Parents of children at school need to know this.
I am in Scotland but would not be surprised if the same applied elsewhere in the UK given the similarities in approach generally.
I have an underlying health condition placing me at high risk of severe illness/death were I to contract the infection, and contacted my child's Edinburgh primary school the week she returned, seeking assurance that parents would be notified immediately should anyone at the school test positive.

The deputy head sought specific guidance on this matter from Health Protection Scotland and was told that should anyone attending or working in the school report a positive test, staff were NOT ALLOWED to tell parents, but should instead arrange a meeting with HPS who would then advise on disclosing the infection to the small number of people whom they believed to have had direct contact with the infected person.

This means that the majority of families would not receive this potentially life saving information which would allow them to make their own risk assessment based on individual circumstances.

This practice is reminiscent of the conduct of authorities in Wuhan at the start of the pandemic, whose actions to conceal the outbreak rather than share the information contributed to its rampant spread.

Alerting families to the presence of covid in the school would not compromise the confidentiality of the infected individual(s), as no names or identifying details need be disclosed.

On a personal level I feel very strongly that it should not be up to someone in an office at HPS, in granting or withholding permission for the schools to alert parents to the presence of infection, to essentially decide whether I live or die, and as a matter of wider public interest as I am sure there are many parents currently sending their children into schools in the belief that should someone at the school test positive they would be immediately notified, when this is not the case as per HPS policy.

How on earth can it be ok to send out a group call if someone has headlice, but not an infection that has killed tens of thousands in the UK alone?

We need some kind of system to allow parents to find out if a school has covid without relying on the state, & if anyone has any ideas or if anything like this exists already I would really love to know.

That letter looks ok

It's Boris Johnson's famous world-beating App: Mutant Track & Trace (MTT)

What would you do if you knew?

WhatsApp and Facebook will do the job of track and trace.

Good anything else attracts the neanderthals

You should only be told if it affects your child so the rule is absolutely right

In same way you’d be contacted by track n trace in society if you’d been exposed

You do not need to know otherwise🤷‍♀️

None of your business!

It’s not secrecy as you’ll be told if it affects you - Otherwise really you’re being nosey!

I actually asked this question for dds school (England) and was told if someone tested positive the bubble would isolate and not return for 14 days or had a negative test (the latter doesn’t seem right to me as it could be too early to show positive?) and parents outside the bubble would only be notified if requested by PHE.

Oh no.

I'd thought we'd be notified.

Does anyone have a link to the official guidance on this (Scotland specific) or where it can be found please ??

I'm going to email schools.

I think all parent staff and staff should be notified if there is a case. Many schools will be sharing corridors, toilets etc so it could be airborne in communal places not just in the bubble.

The gov advjce given out last night was updated shortly after publication to say the year group bubbles wouldn’t need to isolate 14 days if someone tested positive

They removed the passage which had originally said they would

Public health England will tell you if you need to know or you’ll have people acting on information and risk that isn’t there

Scotland specific guidance is here

www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2020/08/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-preparing-start-new-school-term-august-2020-version-2/documents/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-preparing-start-new-school-term-august-2020/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-preparing-start-new-school-term-august-2020/govscot%3Adocument/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-preparing-start-new-school-term-august-2020.pdf

Go to page 18/19 and it starts to talk about outbreak protocols, basically saying any outbreak management will be led by Health Protection team and they will decide who needs to be informed and how

Guidance issued by my local authority

It's becoming very North Korea like

Yes. Exactly like North Korea 🙄

@chergar

Thanks so much. I can never seem to find these things.

It seems as clear as mud then, and up to the school or local authority to inform parents then.

The letter you posted earlier, are you in GG&C ?? If so that's where I am too.

The school I work in wouldn’t even name the child that had chickenpox to me even when I was pregnant... just a generic email saying chicken pox is going around, speak to MW but we can’t say which child due to data protection 🙄

Of course they couldn't name the child, and what good would it have done you if they could?

See, the problem I have with this is that us shielding parents were told by Jennie Harries - on Mumsnet - that we would be kept in the loop if cases rose. CV cases in my children's schools are definitely in my need-to-know bracket.

This is exactly why I'll be keeping my kids at home.

I am really surprised at the post earlier that said her school told kids to isolate for 7 days and then take a test effectively reducing quarantine period to 7 days when the law states it is 14?! Surely this is not allowed - if everyone is allowed to make up their own rules then how can the government expect people to follow them?!

@Namara

Yes I am in GG&C health board

The rule covers everyone not ⚖ parents. In my school we are only told if the child/family are directly in our bubble otherwise we are not officially told although we find out through the grapevine. I personally think as staff we staff we should be told as realistically we occasionally do deal with a child not directly in our bubble. If they are hurt or crying etc.

The right thing is a letter to the whole school
Because
the positive child is likely not the only one
Obviously siblings and contacts have siblings that can attend school.
People want the choice to withdraw child if cases in school due to vulnerable at home.
Especially as say ours is doing before/after clubs so they affect whole school.
Allowing them to all go into the lunch room.
So no i do not trust t&t.
Bear in mind the swindon factor gov were only testing 70 but the company paid for the othet tests and that went up to 300.
Basically in primary they should be shutting the whole bubble (gov know that and u turned). Someone in a room for an hour together is a close contact.
Then as a pp say about toilets etc too.
An outbreak in a pub is different as
You dont have to go. There arevlikely only what 10 recurring staff. Rather than 30 people who could all be infectious all sat next to each other and in lunch halls.

I think it needs 2 positives in 14 days to burst the bubble in September.

Doesn’t the guidance say they will look at closing the bubble if needed on two positive tests do not a definite Acton? There was a post on here this week where someone said the school had had two cases and hadn’t popped the bubble.

A school local to me had a staff member go in with symptoms. It was kept hush-hush, even from staff.

@chergar

I also work in a school and live in Scotland and I agree with the public health guidance on this. I think you may have got the wrong end of the stick here.

If someone in the school tests positive a letter is given to all pupils and staff, a text is also sent out, then those who need to isolate are contacted directly by test and protect.

This is as it should be, school office staff are not clinicians, nor are we trained in all aspects of who needs to isolate/get a test.

If someone at your child's school is positive, you will be told there is a case in school, but you will not be told if it is a pupil or staff members or which class they are in.

4 schools in my area have had a case and that is what happened each time

That's all I wanted. Because of my health conditions I would choose to keep mine off for 2 weeks until hopefully all secondary cases in the school had been picked up, even if it was someone in a different year or class. The hallways and communal areas are jam packed and who knows where an infected child may have coughed or touched, which toilet they used etc.

I will contact the school again but the deputy head phoned HPS specifically after my enquiry and was told they must not tell anyone if a person at school tested positive, they just had to contact HPS.

That means a delay in parents finding out, and also only a few that someone "thinks" might have been around the infected person would be told, not everybody.

I have heard other schools have sent emails/texts out, and hope this is not just because it was going to be in the news anyway and would have looked bad. Clearly they can do it then without breaking confidentiality rules.

It’s corrects. Read Gov guidance. Unlike other notifiable diseases parents aren’t going to be told if there’s a case at school. They are only notified if there’s 2x cases in less than 12 days. Obviously close contacts (I think kids