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On Tuesday, September 1, the direction of the Ministry of Education is expected to make the final announcements for the opening of schools amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Previously, in the briefing of the political authors on the opening of the schools, the Minister of Education, Niki Kerameos, had left open the possibility that the start of the school year would be extended by a week and the students would return to their desks on the 14 of September.
The specific eventuality was mentioned last Friday by the government spokesman, Stelios Petsas, in a television interview.
“The initial date was September 7, we may have an extension of one week, it will be decided on Tuesday, the 1st of the month, if we will have this extension. “With the epidemiological data here today, with the cases at the levels we have today, it is very likely that there will be an extension,” emphasized Mr. Petsas on Mega TV.
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Speaking on SKAI TV today, Niki Kerameos underlined that the final teleconference with the expert committee will take place tomorrow at noon, during which final decisions will be made. However, as the Minister of Education explained, all school units are ready to open on September 7, a date that was the initial planning of the direction of the Ministry of Education for a long time.
Tomorrow at noon the committee of experts will meet and we are completely ready for the opening of the schools and for September 7, as we had planned ” Niki Kerameos highlighted, who said that the final decisions for the start of the school year will be announced on Tuesday.
Sypsas-Gargalianos propose opening of schools on September 7
However, two committee members, who spoke Sunday morning on SKAI TV, were in favor of starting classes on September 7. In particular, Nikos Sypsas said that his own personal opinion and suggestion to the committee, based on current data, is that schools open on September 7. It is recalled yesterday that the infectious disease specialist had revealed that in the event of an outbreak of cases there is a high probability that schools will close again during the winter.
The same date was suggested by Gargalian Panagiotis, provided that everything is ready, with masks and health protocols in schools and teacher training.
Gikas Majorkinis explains in tables why class size and distance to schools don’t matter
It is noted that yesterday in a post on Facebook the epidemiologist Gikas Majorkinis explained the reasons why he is not convinced that the size of the classes is so important in the transmission of the coronavirus.
Majorkinis returned to the topic as his relevant report in Friday’s briefing on the evolution of the pandemic provoked reactions mainly from users of social networks.
Gika Majorkinis’s post
After yesterday’s briefing at the Ministry, I go back to the topic of class size a bit because it seems that the discussion is centered there and to explain why I am not convinced that it is so important.
The 1.5 meter distance is important for droplet transmission and should be observed as closely as possible in general. Where we cannot find a way to reduce the probability of transmission using a mask.
The same logic applies to schools with widespread use of masks in the classroom. It should be noted that classes cannot be considered dining areas. In focus there is a constant alternation of people gathered. Classes always have the same composition, so we can consider them as social “bubbles” or “bubbles”, so the logic in dealing with them is quite different. In principle, any transmission in the classroom is fully traceable and can be limited by a simple restriction, while in focus it creates “orphaned” cases.
A constantly debated issue is: what is the load of distances> 1.5 meters in the classes of 25 students compared to the class of 15 students?
To help explain a bit, I have made a table of classes of 15 students (right). With green arrows I show the 2 distances of the student in the first desk with all the students in the next row (8 distances), for convenience I do not show the rest with students in the same series (6 distances). This student’s distances are 14 and they all exceed 1.5 meters. The total distances in this arrangement are 120.
As shown below, a class of 25 students, every 2 distances, is 325 to 13 to exceed the limit of 1.5 meters, that is, only 4% of all possible combinations. These “infractions” are only in the horizontal plane and do not allow transmission to the vertical axis of the order.
Therefore, from these calculations, converting the class to a size of 15 people eliminates 4% of every 2 distances during the lesson. At the same time, the number of teaching hours to be covered by teachers increases (almost doubles).
So, the scenario shows that for the possibility of transmission exclusively during the educational process in order to lower 4% of the close contacts, you will have to double the exposure time of the teachers.
I understand that intention is always the best of students and teachers, but personally I think the answer is not that simple and I am not entirely sure that there would be (and if there was) a significant gain in reducing the transmission from 25 to 15 in droplet transmission terms “.
It is recalled that on August 27 the Ministry of Education had issued a detailed guide with 25 questions and answers on the opening of schools. Among other things, he mentioned what applies to the use of masks by students and teachers in schools, but also what will apply to absences.
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