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

People leaping on the OP have just as much of an agenda imo.

This

@FinallyHere

If there are currently thousands of asymptomatic DC at school will CV surely this could lead to CV not being an issue in education in few months, as most DC will have had it.

@Marcellemouse

If that is the case, I'm wondering what the impact might be on the teachers and other adults in schools, without whom there won't really be any schools.

I agree. I notice there's someone on nearly every thread now whose DCs teacher is positive.

Ar they not sending class groups home anymore?

PHE have a rapidly mutating algorithm to tell you what to do, currently depending on the number of children who had fish and chips last Friday and the colour of the headteacher's blouse.

So has it changed to not sending class groups home them, this algorithm, or does it depend on the area? This letter above was dated 2nd October, a week or so before a whole year group was send home (secondary) due to just the one case. (different school / area)

I think it's changed because it's now the DfE making the decisions about who to send home and not PHE.

Same here.

@Marcellemouse

What mitigation measures do you suggest?

@marcellemouse

Perhaps even some of the measures being implemented in Italy?
www.thelocal.it/20200806/how-will-italy-schools-change-when-they-reopen

That was kept quiet then

I know it changed in France as well...a few weeks ago

Same here.

I mean only “close contacts” (no teachers) isolating.

*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*

School closed as not enough SLT, including DSL to ensure child safety.

In France this happened...

"Under a new protocol that takes effect on Tuesday, when a child tests positive for Covid, the class it has been attending can “continue as normal for the other pupils, who are no longer considered contact cases,” said the ministry."

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/21/france-relaxes-covid-rules-schools-despite-exponential-rise/

Until now, local health authorities could oblige all pupils in a class with an infected child to self-isolate for seven days and prove they are negative before returning to school or confirm they have had no symptoms in that period.

Now pupils will only be obliged to self-isolate if at least three classmates from different families test positive, the new rules stipulate. It is then up to local health inspectors to decide whether further action is required.

The relaxed measures also mean that mask-wearing elementary or primary school teachers who come into direct contact with an unmasked child who tests positive are not considered contact cases and thus “will no longer be invited to self-isolate”, said the ministry."

So...that is different to here. Where close contacts seem to be sent home. How they define them is not clear. friends?

In France they wear masks in schools and also the French Education minister says that children don't spread covid.

Here, children don't wear masks and Boris says that children do spread covid.

🤷‍♀️

Professor Viner has spouted dangerous rubbish about schools and transmission throughout the past few months. I hope there will be some comeback professionally for him at some point.

@notevenat20

Is this some kind of a joke? Have you ever seen a group of children/teenagers?

Yes I have. It’s only a possibility but my DC at least don’t face each other close up for long when they are talking. It’s not like sitting opposite each other at the dinner table for hours. Of course there is a huge risk of infection if they have a friend round in their room but we are discussing schools.

Pupils in my computer classroom has 4 horizontal rows of PCs, which means they sit about 20cm shoulder to shoulder from each other and the two middle vertical rows are about 50cm facing each other with no screen between them. With each lesson changeover, I teach about 150 odd different pupils daily, with only a minute or so to quickly wipe down keyboards and mice (it is not just faces children touch) with my crappy kitchen role and a spray provided as that is all my school could afford. The pupils are even closer to each other as they walk between lessons. Please stop making inaccurate statements on all of these threads plus the ones you start because you have no idea of schools’ individual circumstances, only your own private school that your own children attend.

We have had positive cases in my large secondary school of 1800+ students already. One near the start from a pupil that closed a year group bubble and one this week from a staff member but apparently the criteria for closing a bubble has now changed and PHE and DofE stated when we called them that two positive cases was needed to close bubbles now. Therefore, the latest case has not closed any bubbles and only the staff member has had to isolate.
My DD’s Primary nearby has also had to already close a Year 4 bubble due to 2 plus positive cases, one pupil and one teacher.
You don’t hear these in the news and therefore, the public are under the impression that these outbreaks are not happening, as this thread shows.
They are happening and we need to start asking questions why they are not being included in the gov briefings, as noblegiraffe correctly points out.

Please note to some reading this who assume by pointing this out, we want to close schools. As teachers we don’t want to close schools and in fact are merely asking for measures to keep them safer, so that they stay open and open to more.

Positive tests aren’t cases.

Test me now for coronavirus I might well be positive, despite being totally symptomless, because the test picks up any strain of coronavirus in the system. It also amplifies the sample to get a stronger result, which is so dodgy.

To quote Dr Michael Yeadon, Ex VP of Pfizer and an absolute expert in RSV testing (Who is outspokenly livid at the handling of this):

“ The test cannot distinguish between a living virus and a short strand of RNA from a virus which broke into pieces weeks or months ago.”

The test is total sham. The death rates were/are a farce. We know this. They lied. A lot. Surely you all know this? If you test positive for Covid and have no symptoms and tragically die in a car accident in 2 weeks, you’re a Covid death. Its insane.

Having pieces of a strain of any coronavirus in your body doesn’t make you a COVID CASE. A Covid case is someone demonstrably ill with Covid, certainly infectious and maybe hospitalised.

Some of the greatest scientists in the world are screaming about T-Cell cross immunity and the fact the pandemic is already over because all the so called ‘asymptomatic CASES’ were just people with cross immunity from similar strains who never got ill but produced antibodies anyway and wouldn’t have been infectious.

There’s also never ever been a second wave ever of any pandemic EVER. It’s a total fabrication.

Some are theorising this whole debacle is down to Fauci literally fudging an article months ago and saying the case fatality rate was 0.1% instead of the Infection fatality rate, which a totally different ball game and far scarier, and he just doesn’t want to admit they fucked up so we have utter chaos. Of course there the whole conflict of interest/shares in the vaccine stuff but I can to go there because it just leads to anti vaxx
stuff which misses the point. The point is corruption and lies and fear mongering.

I really want to stop the world and get off. And yes I know people will go ‘ok fuck off then’. But seriously. We have all lost the plot.

64k people died of flu in JANUARY 2018 alone. Didn’t hear a whiff of it. Didn’t have rolling death toll on the tv everyday. (www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5440785/Killer-flu-outbreak-blame-42-spike-deaths.html)

Wakey wakey.

Who on earth believes that this age range are more likely to be catching it out of school, where they are far more likely to be in small groups, than crowded into classrooms with 30 others? School is where children of this age spend most of their time in contact with the highest number of people. Suggesting they are catching it elsewhere is obviously bullshit propaganda and scientists should not be allowed to spout such nonsense without evidence.

Absolutely.
It won't serve the government's agenda though to admit this.

@Marcellemouse

If there are currently thousands of asymptomatic DC at school will CV surely this could lead to CV not being an issue in education in few months, as most DC will have had it.

Apart from anything else, re-infection is possible, and it has been suggested that subsequent infections may be worse than the first.

So no, it would still be a concern, and the current indications of rising infections in schools are a good reason for more effective anti- covid measures.

Oh RETRACTION. That article is misleading. Apologies. It wasn’t 64k deaths from flu. It was a 42% increase in deaths they assumed was flu, so around 20k deaths.

Will try to find a better source. Strike that from my rant.

@HeartShapedBox4

*Positive tests aren’t cases.

Test me now for coronavirus I might well be positive, despite being totally symptomless, because the test picks up any strain of coronavirus in the system. It also amplifies the sample to get a stronger result, which is so dodgy.*

So why would cases in years 7-11 have increased approx 30 fold in recent weeks? (see second graph in OP)

Your observations wouldn't explain this away at all.

Conspiracy theorists copying and pasting from American sources should be ignored.

@notevenat20

Well compulsory masks everywhere in school would be good, and bring us into line with the rest of the world.

Although I hate idea of wearing masks in lessons, one advantage could be that we could then only send the poorly child home if they test positive. This is what they do in France.

So wearing masks in school would be good. But if we are stuffing 30 kids in a class together all day, if we are following good infection control, we should be quarantining and testing them all if we get a positive case or cases.

Ultimately, unless and until the government recognised the importance of backwards contact tracing as well as forwards to understand the dynamics of the disease, this will all be a great deal of increasingly bad-tempered theorising with people picking their favourite scientists, theories and ways to interpret the data.

Maybe we can trace the impact of the epidemic through the use of all caps on the internet.

I found the article in the current issue of the Atlantic on overdispersion and the importance of K over R particularly interesting in understanding why our usual thinking on disease spread may (May!) be all wrong when it comes to Covid.

I’m sure the scientists mentioned will be a total anathema to some though.

Just from the news. Schools are open all over the world you don’t hear many stories of dozens of cases in a school year.

Why would there be dozens of cases? If it's caught in a school it's more likely to affect the few kids in close contact to the infected person. Have a bit of a google into how it passes to people in enclosed rooms. It doesn't usually infect everyone in the room.

@herecomesthsun eh?

More 7-11 year olds are being tested and coming back positive, because the tests find a positive result for any coronavirus strain. Literally exactly what I’m saying. We don’t know they have Covid at all. And if they aren’t sick they’re not a ‘case’. They are someone who has been tested for an coronavirus strain, which most people have.

Not my observations btw. Literally leading scientists. I’m just repeating.