More protections needed in schools?

[RocketFire7]

Zubaida Haque from independent sage is now reporting that covid is sending more DC are being admitted to hospital than ever before. She believes this is due to the lack of protections and mitigations in schools.

twitter.com/zubhaque/status/1489599939353186311?s=21

Do we now need to implement better protections in schools to keep DC, staff, parents and communities safe? There is also of course the risk of long covid.

Should we be looking to make N95 masks compulsory from age 5 (as many US states have done), air filtration units, rota systems so that social distancing can be maintained and sending home whole year groups when there is a positive test?

@NYnewstart

People are just not reporting positive lateral flows or not testing. Hopefully they are being responsible enough to isolate if they know they have it, but people are certainly not reporting.

I think people are too inclined to look at their local situation and extrapolate nationally...

So if cases are high and increasing in your school, the natural tendency is to think that your school is typical and that's happening everywhere...
But working on that basis, it would be just as reasonable to say that the "pandemic is over" as there are no issues in schools as neither of my children's schools are affected (or at least there are low numbers of Covid absences and no disruption). Clearly that's not true though as my children's schools are just two amongst many.

@ShallWeTalkAboutBruno

ONS is based on actual tests. Zoe is based on people self reporting symptoms. ONS is the most accurate measure we have. The weekly ONS report is out at 2pm so will be interesting to see what it says.

This is true although throughout the pandemic Zoe has been a decent leading indicator.

@ShallWeTalkAboutBruno

ONS is based on actual tests. Zoe is based on people self reporting symptoms. ONS is the most accurate measure we have. The weekly ONS report is out at 2pm so will be interesting to see what it says.

True

Iirc there can be a lag in timing but it’s the best measure

Eg last week fall in 5 to 11 may take a longer to appear than today

Not sure how long lag is - graphs thread is good on this stuff though

"It's counter-instinctive to think that loosening restrictions may actually make things better, and it's natural to want to double down.... but like having an enema, tightening up sometimes can only make it more difficult, loosening may not the natural reaction but helps no end (so they say!)"

Ermmmmmmm? Not sure I understand this analogy. If we want to be covered in shit we should loosen up? Is that what you're driving at?

Improved ventilation would have benefits well beyond COVID. Many classrooms are recording Co2 at levels that would affect concentration and cause headaches etc. (and that's often with the windows open when they would normally be shut. So maybe that't the thing to focus on?

As well as vaccination of vulnerable children

@diplodocus

Improved ventilation would have benefits well beyond COVID. Many classrooms are recording Co2 at levels that would affect concentration and cause headaches etc. (and that's often with the windows open when they would normally be shut. So maybe that't the thing to focus on?

Absolutely, we really need that.

I remember hating stuffy classrooms as a child myself. So hard to concentrate. We should have addressed this by now.

@Aimeehedge

Rotas? No. Not at this stage. It’s airborne and highly infectious so I don’t think the disruption caused is worth it when infection would spread anyway.

Ventilation yes. Hepa purifiers yes. Avoiding inter year assemblies yes. I think proper ffp masks would help too but they’ve been so politicised by idiots in this country that trying to explain how they work is like weeing in the wind.

But purifiers, ventilation and keeping year groups apart for lunch and assemblies etc would go a long way to containing the spread and stopling outbreaks.

This would stop disruption to education and keep kids in school

This is so true and the data support this - I was sceptical about the restrictions in 2020 but keeping year groups apart did seem to have a measurable effect.

I really think that ventilation (which as others have said has benefits to kids education beyond covid), air purifiers (also have other benefits) and keeping year groups apart would be relatively easy to do and would provide a lot of benefits - one of which being more kids in education (and teachers).

But somehow there isn't a hue and cry about kids being out of education if they've actually got covid, only if there's some kind of restriction.

My DD is currently off school with covid - so her education is being disrupted right now. Funny how it coincides quite neatly with when they ditched masks in classrooms. Of the two, the masks definitely disrupted her education a lot less than actually catching covid and passing it on to vulnerable family members (currently quite ill).

Funny how it coincides quite neatly with when they ditched masks in classrooms. Of the two, the masks definitely disrupted her education a lot less than actually catching covid

At our school covid seemed to spread through the classes despite masks - omicron is so transmissible and the flimsy masks most pupils wear (and how they wear them) don't set to make much difference.

Now pretty much everyone has had covid and it's nice that masks are longer required.

Hope your dd recovers quickly!

Our co2 monitor goes off with all the windows open