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.