Cases rising in secondary school-aged children - more mitigation measures needed?

[noblegiraffe]

The graph that was notable by its absence in this week's briefing has been released and it shows a steep increase in infections in 10-19 year olds. This is backed up by the ONS survey showing an increase in infections in years 7-11.

The Guardian appears to be the only newspaper to have noticed this, with government mouthpiece Prof Viner blathering 'it is likely that much of the transmission among groups of young people may be outside school settings, as we really have limited evidence of transmission within schools', completely ignoring the graph in front of his face that shows the rise looking remarkably coincident with the date schools re-opened.

With people on here insisting that the number of outbreaks in schools ( 13,000 kids in Birmingham currently self-isolating ) is nothing to worry about and that 'educational settings' just means that university data is being misinterpreted as applying to school children, surely this data must give pause for thought?

Maybe cramming kids into small classrooms with poor ventilation and no mitigation measures isn't the brightest idea and a rethink is needed before winter really sets in?

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/02/covid-cases-among-secondary-school-aged-children-rise-in-england

Such desperation! No, a hug is not fine. From the guidance: direct close contacts - face to face contact with an infected individual for any length of time, within 1 metre

They were little children so it wouldn’t be face to face. Not that a hug ever is.

What is the desperation you are referring to?

(I have checked the website of the school in question - no information there, and no mention in the press. I presume it is not being disseminated widely as they do not wish to cause a ripple of panic amongst other boarding school parents, who will tend to find it difficult to retrieve children at short notice, no public transport allowed)

They were little children so it wouldn’t be face to face. Not that a hug ever is.
What is the desperation you are referring to?

The desperation to find any reason - any reason, however tenuous - why children could not possibly transmit the virus.

Including “a hug is not close contact because your faces are pointing in different directions”!

Occam’s razor.

We desperately need more testing in schools to settle this debate. I think whole bubbles should be tested when there are cases and we should also be tracking household transmission within affected bubbles.

It appears that we have lots of disruption for relatively few cases and, if this proves to be true, we could develop a more targeted approach to isolation. Conversely, if we find that there are lots of asymptomatic children who are passing the virus on to parents and other household members, we will need to rethink our whole approach. The worst option is to carry on as we are without gathering the data needed to make informed decisions (which is, of course, exactly what the government is doing).

Yeah some people hate activism and they probably told the suffragettes to "shut up woman" and get back to your stitching.

We desperately need more testing in schools to settle this debate.

Exactly. What is happening at the moment is that a very small number of symptomatic and detected cases close a bubble / year group for 14 days. It may be that there are 10x as many asymptomatic cases (as the Northumbria example shows) but the 14 day isolation is an effective response to their presence so the outbreak does not spread further.

Symptomatic testing only allows the narrative to be 'only isolated cases in schools', whereas full testing of the group around those 'isolated cases' might show a very different picture.

IncidentsandAccidents - absolutely. We are all guessing rather than the government looking at doing a proper study of a number of schools with burst bubbles.
Would anyone currenlty suspect if their child went down asymptomatically 13 days after exposure, then 13 days after that they themselves got something very mild but no temp/cough then 8 days after that their colleague got something more typical and 5 days after that the diabetic on the bus got seriously ill?

Anecdotally, one of these sent a year group home this week due to finding a significant number of asymptomatic positives in the latest round of testing

Well that’s just totally unexpected. How about that, stairway?

Interesting case out of my own experience - child in school coughing, but not tested. Elderly relative living with child sitting within about 1.5 metres now being tested due to symptoms. It would be very interesting, if that case comes out positive, to be able to 'trace back' and see if the intermediate child with no symptoms was in fact carrying infection from one to another.

I ahve looked abroad :Italy is also reporting a spike in cases, after managing so well : 14 days after schools have opened. Many schools reporting temporary closure.

Reported in The Times today. Interesting ,as it was abroad, that The Times didn't try to spin it.

They will not do widespread testing in schools. They are afraid of what they will discover and the actions they will have to take.

We are all guessing rather than the government looking at doing a proper study of a number of schools with burst bubbles.

Given that they deliberately put out the message that schools are fine during the briefing, selecting a weird graph (test positivity rate) to show this rather than the ones in the OP that show a different picture, I suspect it wouldn’t suit their agenda to find out whether there’s an issue in schools with asymptomatic cases.

What is weird is the utter horror at that Scottish MP travelling by train despite being positive and how it knowingly put people in danger, but the complete lack of interest in knowing how many positive kids are out there putting people in danger.

We’ve had quite a few children in the same form off for a few days here and there over the last 2 weeks - not self-isolating, not tested, just “ill”. All had a few days off then came back to school. Now one child in the form has tested positive. I wonder what the others had.

@Piggywaspushed

They will not do widespread testing in schools. They are afraid of what they will discover and the actions they will have to take.

This. Definitely this. They would have to take their fingers out of their ears and stop going LaLaLa if they had actual data. And if they had any real belief they would find low rates of infection they would do it. They bloody know what they would find.

They talk about being close for fifteen minutes so a hug might be fine. Being sneezed on probably not so much.

I'm not particularly fussed for myself. On a personal level I'm not worried at all - I'm 99% I've had the virus. I'm happy to have schools stay open. It's just bloody irritating to see other teachers constantly mocked and criticised for describing how things actually are in schools, by people who 'reckon' things.

They talk about being close for fifteen minutes so a hug might be fine. Being sneezed on probably not so much

But when working through 'contact', in a school with a positive case PHE asked for a contact list of every person, the positive person had had '1 minute or more contact with' and isolated all of those staff members.

For all we know, given the lack of proper research, asymptomatic children could be passing on low enough doses to other children and their families and teachers, that they are increasing the likelihood of asymptomatic or mild infection in adults who have close contact with them, and reducing the likelihood of severe infection in such people, given that viral load appears to be relevant to the severity of adult infection.

You lost me at for all we know.

@Piggywaspushed - why? I’m pointing out that research is needed, which is what you are arguing, too, so not sure why you are in any way lost?

@noblegiraffe

How do you know there aren't massive outbreaks in schools, stairway when kids aren't being tested?

Marcel Gosh, it's like all those other threads never happened.

For a start we could have some sort of announcement that lessons will not take place in classrooms where there are no windows, or the windows don't open. We know ventilation is key (look at the big push in Germany), and yet classrooms are very poorly ventilated. Maybe extra money so that heating can be on in classrooms with open windows so that the kids don't die of cold (combined with a national push to wear a vest).

I've always thought that schools (of all kinds, state and private) were overheated and underventilated and wondered at why this was considered acceptable. Non-opening windows is one of those things, like selling off games fields, that has had long-term health and welfare consequences. If state schools had been allowed to keep games fields instead of having them sold off they would have had more scope to set up portacabins/temporary classrooms, spacing out teachers and pupils and making things safer for everyone.

I live near a private school where I can watch temporary classrooms going up and down as required on a games pitch, whether during building works or pandemics or whatever.

But when working through 'contact', in a school with a positive case PHE asked for a contact list of every person, the positive person had had '1 minute or more contact with' and isolated all of those staff members.

Not what happened at my place. PHE said teachers weren't in the bubble so no need.

I don't understand how the same people can be up in arms that Freshers have been exposed to the virus and are catching Covid in droves, whilst simultaneously claiming that 15-18 year olds in secondary schools could not -possibly- be spreading the virus there.

What magic do we think happens between Y13 and uni?

If state schools had been allowed to keep games fields instead of having them sold off they would have had more scope to set up portacabins/temporary classrooms, spacing out teachers and pupils and making things safer for everyone
Couple of problems with that one, @Abraid2
No ,ones for portacabins.
No money for extra teachers - and not enough teachers to at the very least double the numbers in each school.
I have been teaching for 33 years and I rarely remember being too hot in a classroom. They aren’t generally overheated. Although sitting in a gale with rain actually blowing onto my desk yesterday for the whole day made me wish for some heating...

Yeah, I take the point about the lack of money for temporary classrooms. It just makes me mad all the same that such a short-termist things was allowed to happen.

My children's state primary was boiling. I worked as a volunteer there for a decade and often stealthily opened windows.

There should be mass testing of schools. Clearly large numbers of young people can be asymptomatic.