Outbreaks in schools

[Trustisamust]

Since schools have returned there have already been major outbreaks in both my child's secondary and the primary I work at.
The majority of school staff remain unvaccinated.
For how many other schools is this already the case?
I just don't know what to think any more.

[quote reformedcharacters]Article on infections in schools is taken from a peer reviewed study and based on figures from September to December.

Also reported here:

www.itv.com/news/2021-03-19/school-attendance-has-minimal-impact-on-serious-covid-19-infection[/quote]
The report doesn't even look at infections in schools lol.

It looks at risks in homes and finds only a small increased risk for people who lived with school-aged children.

Even the authors don't claim that it had anything to do with transmission in schools.

However, they noted that other differences between households with and without children could have also explained the findings.

Finally whatever was happening back then is irrelevant. We now have a new variant in circulation that is known to be far more transmissible.

[quote Trustisamust]@Waxonwaxoff0 Not at all. What I'm saying is that wearing a mask obviously offers protection which (correct me if I'm wrong) isn't the case for all staff within the school environment?[/quote]
Virus particles are smaller than the fibres in your masks , they won’t stop you getting covid . If they did very few people would have caught it

Adults who lived with children during the pandemic’s second wave were only slightly more at risk of Covid-19 than those who lived without them, suggesting school attendance has minimal impact on infection rates, a new study has found

Have you read the report in the BMJ notrub?

What is your expertise in this area?

@LadyCatStark. I expressed doubt about lateral flow tests in my post earlier in this thread. My experience makes me doubt they’re as accurate as the government seems to believe.

2 years group down, could just be one family, one teacher testing positive? I wouldn’t say it’s likely to be a major outbreak. In most areas covid is suppressed. Kids getting sent home is just part of the new norm. However never been a case in daughters school.

2 primary schools near to me have closed completely for 10 days due to Covid outbreaks, however they are both quite small and have at least 2 year groups per class if that makes sense (I think one might even have 3 year groups in one class).

@Trustisamust

Also, I am aware that some parents haven't consented to their child being tested? My son still says they are allowed to attend school but I don't know if that's true?

Why wouldn’t they be allowed to go to school ? Neither masks or testing is mandatory .

The R rate is rising again.

DGS was sent home on Tuesday, along with the rest of his Y5 cohort. 1 confirmed positive case. He is due to go back the day they break up for Easter.

@WaverleyPirate

The R rate is rising again.

Where?

Do you have a link. I’m sure England is decreasing still

The news articles today are saying so.

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-uks-r-number-increases-slightly-to-between-0-6-and-0-9-12250408

My son is at a large, urban primary school where they had 50% of children in during the recent lockdown. We have had 3 cases since last September - two children (caught from parent) and a member of staff (caught from a relative), no in-school transmission. There's been none since they went back two weeks ago.

[quote WaverleyPirate]The news articles today are saying so.

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-uks-r-number-increases-slightly-to-between-0-6-and-0-9-12250408[/quote]
Oh cases still decreasing so that’s good.

I thought you meant over 1

There were primary school closures during lockdown though, the rate of covid in that age group didn’t drop as much as in others. Presumably because of so many kids being in school. Tbh the only place my child is going to get covid is from others in school. If vaccinations aren’t until next year realistically there will be cases that spring up. Lots of older siblings and parents doing LFTs so more cases will be detected and classes isolated earlier

Positivity rates will increase due to people taking a PCR after positive LFT (obviously the PCR is more likely to be positive than for random symptoms)

@reformedcharacters

Adults who lived with children during the pandemic’s second wave were only slightly more at risk of Covid-19 than those who lived without them, suggesting school attendance has minimal impact on infection rates, a new study has found

I have read it - have you? In full? because you're simply throwing quotes from reporters at me, instead of what the researchers actually found.

Maybe read it again?

Maybe read this one as well:
www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30927-0/fulltext

secondary school-aged children are about eight times more likely to introduce an infection to a household than adults

@WaverleyPirate

The R rate is rising again.

It's risen very slightly, but too soon to have been influenced by school reopenings. We won't know for 2-3 weeks what the impact of THAT on R has been.

But surely the spread would have started regardless if they were a symptomatic? Teachers are statistically no more likely to catch COVID than any other unvaccinated key worker-ONS produced a study on it.

notrub

Care to post the text from the BMJ report?

Engagement with taking the LFT and mask compliance both very low in my school, around 25%...because the government has said they are not mandatory.
I didn’t think schools would close again, but now I’m having second thoughts.

Despite these temporal associations we cannot be confident our findings are caused by schools remaining open during the second wave. There may be other differences between adults who live with children and those who don’t, providing greater opportunities for adult to adult transmission such as in playgrounds, more frequent shopping, or working outside of home if not home-schooling.

There you go @reformedcharacters

Personally I, along with SAGE prefer to look at studies that measure direct affects, rather than indirect affects as the latter are prone to all kinds of errors.

Here’s the conclusion:

Conclusions
During the first wave of the UK pandemic, for adults 65 years and under living with children, we found no evidence of a markedly increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection or severe covid-19 outcomes. However, we found evidence of increased risk of infection and hospital admission with covid-19 for adults living with children during wave 2, although the absolute increases in risk were low. These increased risks during wave 2 were observed at a time when schools remained open, raising the possibility that widespread school attendance may have led to increased risks to households, but other differences between households with and without children could also have explained these observational findings. Close monitoring and evaluation as schools re-open will be crucial to inform ongoing policy.

Cases were always going to increase when schools went back. More contact = more cases. It’s the nature of a virus.
However the decision was made that the increase in cases is a price that we will pay for getting children back into school, as the risk of harm caused millions of children being out of school for prolonged periods is greater than the risk of a small increase in cases.

It’s a shame that they didn’t categorise further those at risk. This could be significant eg. Overall a small increase but all of the increase was seen in the CEV groups