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The pandemic is still high in Germany, but now, of all time, some federal states seem to be beginning to loosen infection protection rules in schools at a crucial time. The background is an overload of the health authorities.
In Hamburg, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate, health authorities now apparently order, at least in some cases, that only students who are actually infected should be quarantined. Everyone else, even those sitting next to them, should continue to go to school, as long as a mask is worn in class.
First, the Hessischer Rundfunk reported that in the Offenbach district and in the city of Frankfurt, full classes are only quarantined in exceptional cases if a student is infected with the corona virus.
Everyone else should keep coming to class. The Frankfurt health department had confirmed to Hessischer Rundfunk that “only in exceptional cases” was it necessary to suspend the presence of an entire class.
Mask turns peers into second-degree contact persons
Apparently this is also done in Hamburg. This arises from the new rules of a service instruction in a school in the Hanseatic city, which is available to the Tagesspiegel. Since the beginning of this week, the health department has only been classifying as 1 contact persons in a class with a positive case, “who did not wear the mask correctly in class or the room was not ventilated according to regulations, to avoid an imminent overload ”. it is, ”it says there.
If you have adhered to these rules, “all those affected become contact persons 2 and therefore do not go into quarantine.” In Hamburg, as in all federal states, the regular operation of schools continues to apply, without a minimum distance.
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At the beginning of the month, Hamburg had introduced a mask requirement in all secondary schools from fifth grade onwards. However, the new procedure contradicts the recommendations of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). This expressly designates first degree contact persons as “near field” persons who were within 1.5 meters or less of the infected person.
In the best case, this exposure can be “reduced” by wearing a mask. For school classes, the RKI even recommends “a quarantine order for all people regardless of individual risk assessment” because the contact situations there are confusing.
The Hamburg health authority denies that these guidelines are being ignored. Rather, it reports on request: “Health authorities continue to monitor each individual case in schools precisely with regard to the risk of infection and, if necessary (limited space, difficult contact situation), order a quarantine.”
In the schoolyard and in the canteen without mouth and nose protection
“In any case, the mask requirement is not consistently upheld in Hamburg schools. On the playground, schoolchildren can now remove their mouth and nose covers in a different way than before, “to reduce stress for everyone involved,” as it says in a letter from school senator Ties Rabe (SPD ) to schools.
Students can also remove their masks while eating in the dining room, there is no other way. However, the young mix again here. How this should be handled does not emerge from the operating instructions.
From schools it can be heard that this point is “overlooked”. The new rules are likely to trigger even more discussions, as a district school in Hamburg had to be closed due to a large number of corona infections. A massive test at the Ida-Ehre school in question revealed 55 infected people from 25 school classes, thus, according to school authorities, sources of infection inside and outside the school are assumed.
Problems with similar procedures in Rhineland-Palatinate
A similar approach is also sparking discussions in Rhineland-Palatinate. Parents were angry about the crown rules in schools, as Mainz’s “Allgemeine Zeitung” reports. Also in the Mainz-Bingen district, classmates of infected people were apparently not classified as first-degree contact persons.
The use of masks and regular ventilation is said to have led to the assessment in some cases that classmates are only second-degree contact persons and therefore do not have to be quarantined. At the request of the Tagesspiegel, the Mainz-Bingen health department confirmed: “Wearing a mask during lessons means that the school class is not fully classified in the category of ‘contact person 1’.”
Therefore, only individual people in the immediate vicinity “for example, the person sitting next to you” should be quarantined. However, he goes on to say: “The use of a mask basically facilitates the assessment by the Mainz-Bingen health department; depending on the situation and the occurrence at the site, the assessment may depend on the individual case.”
A spokesman for the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Health told Tagesspiegel that the permanent use of masks in class could be an argument for the health department to “assess contacts in the immediate and wider environment so that quarantine is not necessary. “.
However, the Ministry of Health is not aware of whether these cases have already occurred. An “individual risk assessment” is carried out for each case. The spokesperson also said that health authorities are currently very overburdened: the situation is “currently absolutely on the edge.”
