If a child in the class has Covid - what happens next?

[girlcrushonvillanelle]

I'm so sorry if I'm being silly, but I'm confused.

My DD goes back to school tomorrow. If one of her class mates comes down with Covid, do we all as a family need to self isolate for 14 days?

I'm worried as I run a small business and my only colleagues child is in the same class at school.

No, only your child needs to self isolate as only they have been in direct contact with someone with covid. Should your child develop symptoms / test positive then you will need to self isolate too. However, if your child is young enough to still need childcare during the day this is a problem because obviously you can’t risk leaving them with anybody else! In which case you may need to be off to look after them...

The rules for my school is one case = the whole bubble needs to isolate [each of my children are in different bubbles of 120 kids!!] but that means my DP (who is self employed and works out of the house) can still work. Unless the child isolating shows symptoms, then my DP needs to isolate until he gets a negative test.

Its going to be a long, harsh winter.

Given they will have been in the same bubble, could you and your colleague (employee?) share childcare if the class is sent home? Possibly not permitted under the letter of the rules, but much less risky than bringing a household not within the bubble into the arrangements.

No, that's OK. Thank you - As long as I can go out to work we will be fine.

We can deal with child care, both mine and my colleagues husbands work from home so it would be hard, but we could probably make it work.

Obviously as long as the children are well!

It's going to be a strange strange time, maybe more so than the last 6 months!!

I know that our school are setting the kids (Y5) up with their own laptops and are keeping the same way of working as lockdown. That way if they all need to stay at home for 2 weeks (or longer) they know what they need to do and how they need to work.

There were a few children during lockdown who did nothing because the parents didn't know how to use the chrome books and google classroom etc. So hopefully those children will be able to sort it on their own from here.