Second thoughts about school LFTs

[Owltree]

I received a letter from my sons school outlining the plan for testing week beginning 8th March.

Each form has been allocated a 10 minute slot. So 30 children will be arriving at a time. If your child has close contact with another child who tests positive they will need to self isolate, the likelihood is all 30 will be mixing on the first test day.

I understand that a test will be positive if you have had COVID within the previous 90 days. Given that 1/3 of cases are asymptomatic I feel there is a reasonable chance someone will test positive and the rest will then need to self isolate.

I’m considering not taking DS for the first test as he can still go to school anyway. I know this is not in the spirit of helping schools but I can’t bear the thought of needing to isolate DS any longer.

He would only need to self isolate if he tested positive. Surely you wouldn’t want a positive child infecting others?

The whole thing is ill-thought through - I'm not sure I want my non-medically trained, clumsy child being supervised by a non-medically trained person to shove something up their nose - for what is to all intense and purposes, a medical test.

Not to mention the ethical minefield of testing asymptomatic children. Schools should NOT be having to do this. Surely the more parents that do not consent, the louder the message to the government. If they are happy for testing after this to occur at home, why can't they all happen at home?

Think the point being made is that if you have had Covid then you will test positive for up to 90 days. If a school has had a lot of Covid cases and a lot of asymptomatic Covid cases that have never been picked up, then the isolations and 'bubble bursting' will be massive. Unless they aren't going to isolate close contacts of positive cases and will just carry on with testing as they were going to do in January. Very bad idea IMO.

So it's optional for your child but not all the others? What would you say if every other parent decided their precious child shouldn't risk having to isolate?

Can you not see how this will go? Half the kids opt out, one of them infects everyone else. They take it home and their parents take it to work and colleagues in turn take it home, give it to their children who take it into another school where they're not bothering to test either because isolation is above them. Numbers of infections climb and and as a result, so do hospitalisations. The more infections, the more hospitalisations and the bigger the impact on the NHS. Within weeks, we are back to the NHS struggling to cope and potential lockdowns rather than beginning to unlock and looking forward to a more positive summer.

And it is always worth remembering that the majority of school staff have been nowhere near a vaccination centre yet. So when it spreads to them, your school will close.

If you want out of this shit, follow the fucking instructions.

@EnoughnowIthink

So it's optional for your child but not all the others? What would you say if every other parent decided their precious child shouldn't risk having to isolate?

Can you not see how this will go? Half the kids opt out, one of them infects everyone else. They take it home and their parents take it to work and colleagues in turn take it home, give it to their children who take it into another school where they're not bothering to test either because isolation is above them. Numbers of infections climb and and as a result, so do hospitalisations. The more infections, the more hospitalisations and the bigger the impact on the NHS. Within weeks, we are back to the NHS struggling to cope and potential lockdowns rather than beginning to unlock and looking forward to a more positive summer.

And it is always worth remembering that the majority of school staff have been nowhere near a vaccination centre yet. So when it spreads to them, your school will close.

If you want out of this shit, follow the fucking instructions.

I agree that testing will pick out a lot if not all the positive cases and if the school isolate close contacts/bubbles then this will be safer. But it is not a way to keep kids in school as this will cause more having to self isolate.

I will be getting my kids tested as I work very part time and don't need my wage to survive if I don't get paid for being off. DH works from home. This won't work for everyone though.

They should be SDing before having the test, so if someone test positive, there is no impact on the others taking the test.

I agree that the testing could pick up children who've had Covid asymptomatically in the last 90 days but don't actively have it now. And this will mean (presumably) that they have to unnecessarily self-isolate for 10 days. Most children, however, have surely done very little mixing since school finished (Tier 4) or start of lockdown (everywhere else) so the chance of them having contracted Covid is reasonably small. So this should impact a small number only.

Yes this will be the case for the first few weeks but when they start mixing at school, especially if parents are going back to work etc then it will impact on others.