Ds has been back in school since Monday and now has a temperature and is full of snot

[FlatteredFool]

Ffs. Anyone else's dc picked anything up this week? We spent a lot of the autumn isolating due to fevers and coughs and here we go again

Chewingle, if you are doubting the veracity of cases in schools, reports from Greater manchester show this:

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/hundreds-pupils-sent-home-greater-20094070

Several of the schools mentioned have multiple cases, whether in the same year or across the school. Just because you live in an area with low community cases that lead to multiple in-school cases doesn't mean that other places are equally lucky.

When mine went back in August they were off with a cold from day 3!

When my son went back to nursery after their last outbreak he came back with a snotty cold and fever on day 4 🤦 Then we all got it, but worse. All tested negative with PCRs.

Thankfully there's very little Covid around at the moment in most areas of the country (not all), but there are plenty of other viruses around still.

@Chewingle No, not many are! My dd only has a sore throat but is still quite happy. I don't know what to do

@Realitea

For those who have children who have an awful cold/sore throat/etc. do they go to school as normal if they're up to it? I'm very conflicted about what to do. The primary school dd goes to say send them in unless they have the top 3 symptoms. But this will miss a huge amount of children who present differently. It's much more common to have different symptoms with children. ARGH!

No, because every child that then catches it is supposed to isolate and test to be sure it's not covid. Even if you're sure it's just a cold, this is what you should be doing. It's a big pita but needs to be done.

@Realitea

For those who have children who have an awful cold/sore throat/etc. do they go to school as normal if they're up to it? I'm very conflicted about what to do. The primary school dd goes to say send them in unless they have the top 3 symptoms. But this will miss a huge amount of children who present differently. It's much more common to have different symptoms with children. ARGH!

After a negative test, yes. Until the test, no. Tests are now so widely available and so quick that there seems no real reason not to test, especially as we know how young children's symptoms can be atypical.

For those struggling with the decision to make a call on symptoms I would absolutely book a PCR test to rule out covid. You may have missed a temperature and I would not feel any guilt whatsoever about ticking that box to access a test. If you contacted a GP about the same symptoms it’s very likely they’d ask for a covid test to rule it out.

Tests are pretty quick at the moment and you would likely have the results before Monday if you went to a test centre.

DD who is 5 has been in nursery/school continuously since last March as we are both keywokers and she has never been as germ free. Little snot, no coughs or sneezes... previous winter she was a permanent cough bucket with crusty nose every morning 🤮

We are in Greater Manchester and rates are really down at the moment in our area but I expect they'll be up by the end of next week now they are all back at school. Dds have complained of headaches, nausea and sore throats this week. It's bound to happen after being isolated at home for so long then suddenly being exposed to hundreds of people.

He's negative thank goodness.

Pleased to hear that

We made it 3 days, my 4 year old coughed just as she went into school so she had to come home along with my 3 year old and 8 year old.

Booked a walk in test that got cancelled because of the wind so ended up doing the test at home. Posted them at 3:30 Saturday afternoon and had the results before midday Sunday!

Our school went back on Monday. The kids were sent home on Tuesday to isolate as a member of staff had tested positive.

The kids who'd been there over lockdown were already isolating after contact with a confirmed case late the week before.

School shut for two weeks after 1 day and a couple of hours open.

Their immune systems will be utterly shit after locking them in the house for months and months, I expect for most kids it’s going to be a re-run of that “first time in nursery” feeling when they are sick more than they are well!

My DC did have one of the main 3 symptoms (new cough but child is prone to coughs) so we had her tested negative but its a hard one re: other symptoms.

@Realitea I'd put the onus on the school. I'd maybe message and say "Jack has a cold but seems well enough do you want him in or not"

@MightyMidnight

Our school went back on Monday. The kids were sent home on Tuesday to isolate as a member of staff had tested positive.

The kids who'd been there over lockdown were already isolating after contact with a confirmed case late the week before.

School shut for two weeks after 1 day and a couple of hours open.

Why would this require the whole school to shut? Had the teacher been in every bubble?

Luckily I’ve got lateral flow tests coming out of my ears here, so we’ve all tickled our tonsils and, as suspected, just an innocent case of revolting kids sharing their snot around

LFTs are notoriously unreliable (esp if Innova / Xiamen biotime biotechnology) with a very high false negative rate. Anyone with symptoms should do a PCR.

@Crunchymum - thanks for that. I did exactly that. I also got dd tested in the end as she was coughing too. I was amazed that we got the results from the drive in testing centre just six hours later. Really reassuring and dd didn't have to miss school in the end. They really wanted her in.

Are the children wearing masks in school? My DC have been in school since August, where all students are wearing masks every day with no exceptions allowed, and we haven't had a single sniffle - which is quite different from usual years where colds seem to come and go all winter.

In my part of uk im pretty sure you have to isolate now with a temp, even if test negative.

I thought my kid just had a cold. I kept him off and we all got tested. We all tested positive and now the whole year is shut down. Half the class have tested positive within a matter of days. Most of them have symptoms too. :(

*In my part of uk im pretty sure you have to isolate now with a temp, even if test negative.'
Sorry, if identified by test and trace. I'm confusing myself.

@Kimye4eva It's a small school, so yes the teacher had been mixing. And kitchen staff also tested positive and now all the teachers have tested positive too so no online provision. Just a clusterfuck and badly timed for the poor kids going back after months off school.

@MightyMidnight oh that sucks. I think with small schools they either escape entirely or the whole place is taken down.

Rates are up in many parts of GM. No surprise there then with schools going back and lateral flow testing picking up asymptomatic cases.