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There are no plans to extend the midterm school recess, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said.
“It will not be extended,” he confirmed.
“We have emerging and growing evidence of the cost of education” for children of school closings.
“We need to keep children in schools” and “keeping children in school is a priority for the Government,” he emphasized during an interview on RTÉ Radio One.
The minister reacted to reports on Friday that the midterm recess in schools could be extended into October and that the idea had been informally discussed in Cabinet.
Emphasizing that “there will be no longer recess in the medium term,” he said the evidence is that schools are not contributing to the increase in Covid-19 cases.
He said the number of children who contracted the virus before and after schools reopened was roughly the same. “The reports I receive are that schools are safe for children, that there is a very low level of transmission than for adults.”
It was similar to the evidence from around the world and in line with the WHO (World Health Organization findings.
Former Minister of State for Continuing Education Niall Collins said the government had “absolutely no plans” to close schools for another week during the next midterm recess, even though such a measure was briefly discussed. .
“There are absolutely no plans to close our schools beyond the traditional one-week break,” Collins told RTÉ’s This Week in Politics program on Sunday.
“I don’t think the parents of the children and the children themselves would appreciate us if we closed the schools,” he said. “Schools that stay open are a high priority for this Government,” said Fianna Fáil TD.
Students who took a rented accommodation run by universities or private providers should be reimbursed for costs, as classes have been moved online due to Covid-19, he said.
Meanwhile, Professor Philip Nolan of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) has said that the reopening of schools has not changed or accelerated in any way the trajectory of Covid-19.
While he declined to comment on reports that schools could close for longer in the middle of the term, Professor Nolan said there was no evidence to show that schools are a place of transmission of the virus.
“In fact, the number of cases in the age group four to 18 years has grown less rapidly than the number of cases in the general population. It appears that this age group is contracting the virus largely in family and community settings and not in schools, ”said Professor Nolan, who chairs the Nphet Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education also said that the latest tests show that schools have reopened safely with the support of prevention and control measures recommended by public health authorities.
As of October 6, there have been massive testing of 5,890 students and teachers in 236 schools, on foot of public health risk assessments. These tests identified an additional 90 cases over and above the original cases, which equates to a rate of 1.5% compared to the Community rate of 6%.
“Public health has confirmed that they are expanding their network with massive testing in schools to assess the evidence for transmission levels and that this low rate supports other evidence that schools are a safe environment for staff and students.” the spokesman said.
It added that there were no significant changes in the proportion of total weekly Covid-19 cases attributable to school-age children before and after schools reopened.
This, he said, supported the hypothesis that children are not at increased risk for Covid-19 in the school setting.
School administrators, who oversee the operation of elementary and secondary schools, said they have been told by department officials that there are no plans to close schools any longer mid-term.
Several higher school management sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were told that while this approach had been examined in Northern Ireland, there was no desire to do the same in the Republic at this time.
A cabinet minister, who declined to be named, confirmed that the option of closing schools in the context of a ‘circuit disruption’ or moving to level 5 had been briefly discussed, but it was impossible to say if or when this could happen. .
“There are a lot of obstacles to go through before we get to Level 5. Maybe it’s before or after the middle of the school term, who knows,” said the source.
“Whenever that happens, schools are likely to close. There is a logic to reduce the movement of up to a million people, but we will be guided by the public health councils ”.
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