BMJ: Teachers not at greater risk of hosp'n, and lower risk of severe disease, than general population

[Kokeshi123]

www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2060?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=hootsuite&utm_content=sme&utm_campaign=usage

Unlike previous studies, this one actually looked at periods when schools were open and compared like-with-like for those periods.

Compared with adults of working age who are otherwise similar, teachers and their household members were not found to be at increased risk of hospital admission with covid-19 and were found to be at lower risk of severe covid-19. These findings should reassure those who are engaged in face-to-face teaching.

This should not be taken to mean that we should do schooling with no mitigations whatsoever--I'd be in favor of doing indoor masks for kids and teachers till the winter is over if it was up to me, and ventilation is always a good thing anyway. However, at least this should provide some reassurance for teachers and families. And in my opinion, this kind of thing should settle the argument on having any further school closures; mitigations are one thing, but schools absolutely must remain open IMO.

I am glad that, when both schools and communities have significant mitigations in place (contact isolation, restrictions that limit numbers of close contact within the community and in school by restricting large gatherings such as assemblies etc etc) teachers are not disproportionately affected by severe Covid and death.

I am not reassured that this gives us any information about the likely illness levels in the coming term, when all restrictions are removed.

Haven't the bast majority of teachers been double vaccinated by now?

@echt

It's nice to see a balanced article and not the heresay teachers are dropping dead everywhere rhetoric that was around last year

Never happened.

Well, recollections may vary……

Certainly I recall numerous threads in which a number of individuals claimed their risk was higher than NHS workers. I was familiar with the numbers on health care worker infection rate and mortality rate and asked on at least four threads for comparable information on teachers, as I assumed the concern was based on data. It was never forthcoming.

Back to the point - I had assumed teachers would have a higher rate of vaccination and possibly a higher rate of compliance with social distancing and masking recommendations in their personal lives at least.

As pointed out above of course, hospitalization is the not the only issue and I would expect in a otherwise healthy vaccinated population that the bobber problem will be time off work affecting staffing which will disrupt learning significantly.

On the ‘safety of school staff during lockdowns’ point - in many primaries, attendance of ‘keyworker’ children was so high that exposure of those staff working in schools was pretty much normal in terms of numbers and length of close contacts. No masks were allowed, so for those staff, the level of exposure was pretty much the same as after March 6th, with the risk being reduced only by the community lockdiwn.

Sorry, should have said - in most recent lockdown.

Teaching has the 3rd highest death rate from Covid in this country (after health workers and bus drivers).

Source please?

Because according to the ONS:
Rates of death involving COVID-19 in men and women who worked as teaching and educational professionals, such as secondary school teachers, were not statistically significantly raised when compared with the rates seen in the population among those of the same age and sex.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/deathsregisteredbetween9marchand28december2020

School closures were never about protecting the health of teaching staff, so the idea that we should keep schools open because teachers don't get hospitalised on an appreciably larger scale spectacularly misses the point.

As has been pointed out, it's quite likely that with the plan of unmitigated spread there will continue to be closures and disruption, because teachers are more likely to catch Covid and need to have time off. The government have chosen to do things this way so that it won't be the "government's fault" if your school closes.

There have been similar statistics released before at just the opportune time to smooth government plans about back to school, too. Memories here are short!

It is worth saying that my main worry is NOT my own health - I am worried about CEV children and the CEV amongst the parent / carer group, and I am worried about educational disruption caused by staff and pupil absence.

I am also worried about burnout if staff due to the relentless pressure of providing parallel online ad physical teaching both when children are at home and when staff are. All children isolating have to be provided with instant online learning, and all infected reachers have to provide plans for their class cover staff AND deliver online learning.

Yes it is reassuring that all the following mitigations worked; partial school closures, masks, isolations, bubbles, going outside as much as possible, staggard lunches and drop off and wider society things such as restaurants shut down and households not mixing.

I do feel less reassured that I could have covid and my son, 14 doesnt have to isolate and can go into secondary school with all mitigations removed. I cant see how teachers wont be exposed and end up taking time off ill (even if they arent hospitilised they still have to be off)

All this tells us is that teachers tend to be generally young, female and healthy and therefore less at risk of hospitalisation and death.
It doesn't tell us anything about long covid.
It doesn't reassure me as a CEV teacher who is being forced to choose between resigning or ignoring the advice the government has given CEV people (avoid crowds and unvaccinated people!).
It doesn't reassure pregnant teachers.
And it also doesn't mean that schools can stay open if lots of staff are off sick, even if it is for a two week 'mild' case.
It's also not like the government ever cared about staff safety and made any decisions on that basis. A maths professor at Cambridge reported the ONS figures the government were using to the statistics standards agency because they had clearly been fiddled to make schools look safe.

'Certainly I recall numerous threads in which a number of individuals claimed their risk was higher than NHS workers.'

So do I. I work in a school 10.5 hrs a day and even I felt it was a bit much.

MissTrip82

Well, recollections may vary……

Yes they do, the many threads stating that no teachers had died and if they did they couldn't possibly have got covid from pupils.

I had assumed that any valid study on risks to teachers would have carefully matched cohorts for comparison that were similar in age and gender at least - since these are such obvious factors that affect the risk? Not matching cohorts in this way, if this is how the study was conducted, does look like a fairly fundamental flaw in any conclusions about the role of occupation in terms of Covid risk...

[quote Passmeamenuatthetottenham]Teaching has the 3rd highest death rate from Covid in this country (after health workers and bus drivers).

Source please?

Because according to the ONS:
Rates of death involving COVID-19 in men and women who worked as teaching and educational professionals, such as secondary school teachers, were not statistically significantly raised when compared with the rates seen in the population among those of the same age and sex.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/deathsregisteredbetween9marchand28december2020[/quote]
Look at the dates on your link-March 2020 to December 2020. Think about what happened for the first 6 months of that.

When the ONS then only looked at 1 September to 7th Jan 2021, teaching and education was the fourth at most risk occupation for catching Covid.

CEV are vulnerable from any illness. My mum gets so annoyed with this argument. She’s CEV & spends her whole life being careful about any illness. A couple years ago, a cold/ear infection caught from my children landed her in a critical condition in hospital. She used to work in a school nursery for 20+ years but had to quit when she developed her illness that will be with her the rest of her life. She knew it was too risky unfortunately & made a call.

Also, people talking about a teachers & kids being off for 10 days when they catch covid, well yeh but it’ll only happen once per person. You are very unlikely to catch it again within 6-12 months.

@ChloeDecker - those stats are about catching covid, not dying of it. Very different.

Surely we're now resigned to absolutely everybody catching Covid apart from a few hermits and CEV people with stringently managed isolation? All school children and teachers in person will catch Covid over the next school year, which means that mitigation measures are only cost-effective for short term periods like exams.

Teachers who are temporarily vulnerable due to pregnancy or medical treatment need protection, possibly by extended sick leave or transfer to remote duties, which will be expensive and an administrative nightmare but not impossible. Permanently CEV teachers were always at high risk and in the absence of a vaccine which prevents transmission far better than the existing ones I don't think it's possible to keep them permanently safe in a classroom environment.

Look at the dates on your link-March 2020 to December 2020. Think about what happened for the first 6 months of that.

When the ONS then only looked at 1 September to 7th Jan 2021, teaching and education was the fourth at most risk occupation for catching Covid.

Right - so that is the 4th most likely group to catch Covid and not the 3rd most likely group to die from Covid. Also that is a hell of a lot of different occupations lumped into those first 3 categories in your screenshot.

So the original claim is still BS?

Yes, when I was quite severely immunosurpressed due to drugs I was being given, I was told there was no way I should be working in a school for the duration of my treatment due to infection risk. This was way before Covid.

Also people are so flippant about "mild" Covid. I had mild Covid and was back to work after 15 days but suffered lots of sidesffects for over a year. Not debilitating like some people, but it has been a hard, tiring sometimes worrying year. I am a school worker and quite a few collegues are working but still suffering too. TAs are generally not as young as teachers.

"Mild" Covid can indeed be an absolute fucker. I'm not looking forward to catching it but I'm resigned to the fact that I will because what's the alternative? If I knew that people were working on vaccines which gave a realistic hope of thoroughly preventing against transmission then I'd happily socially distance for another year or so but AFAIK they're not.

I do agree that this study sort of says that teachers are relatively young fit and healthy. There's also a relatively small number of people from occupations outside of healthcare settings. I'm not sure how valid it is really

But ultimately education needs to happen, schools need to be open and teachers need to be there. I feel a bit uncomfortable with the way some posters on this thread have insinuated teachers have it worst or that they feel unhappy that others get to work from home to keep them safe.

Healthcare has to happen in person, lots of the healthcare workers who caught it were not providing itu care to covid patients they were providing routine care to patients. Healthcare workers have accepted for a long time that they are at greater risk, because their job needs to happen. I think teachers do need to accept that they may catch covid, their job brings them into contact with lots of children and that is a risk.

[quote Bobholll]@ChloeDecker - those stats are about catching covid, not dying of it. Very different.[/quote]
I know they are about catching Covid, hence I wrote ‘catching Covid’ in my post.

Regarding death rates, originally, ONS reported that 139 education staff died when reported on at Christmas
www.tes.com/news/139-teacher-and-education-worker-covid-deaths-2020 but after a freedom of information request as a previous poster mentioned, the ONS responded with
The dataset represents provisional counts of deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), by occupational groups during the pandemic. The analysis is not solely focussed on Teaching occupations. These deaths are coded using the information supplied on the death certificate in line with Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2010) as mentioned above. However, due to public interest, ONS produced a separate table with breakdowns for deaths in Teaching and Educational occupations in table 8. We are unable to produce teacher deaths during the period of September to December without producing bespoke analysis. As stated above, custom outputs will be available to order following completion of the 2020 mortality dataset.
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide you with data on risk of death by COVID-19 by occupation as we do not hold this analysis.

So regarding that bespoke analysis, later on in Feb 2021, ONS released the data that confirmed they only reported up to age 64 (see table 8)
www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fhealthandsocialcare%2fcausesofdeath%2fdatasets%2fcoronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales%2fcurrent/reftablesfinal.xlsx.

However, when including education staff aged 65 or over, numbers rose to approx 570 skwawkbox.org/2021/01/25/new-ons-data-show-570-education-staff-have-died-of-coronavirus-but-media-claim-just-139-as-ons-top-line-data-hides-majority/

This is useful regarding the OP’s opening article that discusses age range as a whole. Older members of staff were very much at increased risk although the ONS could never comment on this risk but the govt passed on to the media that obviously interpreted their own level of risk (the govt still wanting to push their ‘Schools are safe’ mantra I assume).

Thankfully, most staff (but not all) are double vaccinated. This won’t stop education disruption (my school currently has about 74 Year 13s with positive PCRs due to Reading festival and they are all missing the start of their important year-remember, this is the cohort who didn’t sit their GCSEs- but with no mitigations outlined in any guidance from the DforE and the promised CO2 monitors nowhere to be seen, it is definitely not something that is reassuring many pupils, parents and staff.

546 education staff have died according to ONS - they just cleverly split the options we could choose. So teacher, secondary teacher state, secondary teacher private, secondary teacher other, primary etc, SEND, support staff, secretarial education support staff. Rather than just say education (like they did for most sectors). Wonder why ???
I'm 54, have a heart condition and although double vaccinated I could still get v ill. Really appreciate the parents and kids who do care and wear a mask round me. But many seem to want to make me ill 😷.