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A Glanmire national school will close for 14 days after 17 children were diagnosed with the coronavirus.
Gaelscoil Ui Drisceoil in the city, which has more than 200 enrolled students, has experienced outbreaks in five separate classes across all age groups, the understand, while informing parents that the school would close until at least December 8th.
A spokesperson for the school said they had “no comment to make” on the advice from the Department of Education, except that “we have followed the HSE guidelines at all times.”
They confirmed that parents should be “absolutely 100% informed”.
“We have the highest standards and protocols.”
The news comes as Ireland announced six additional Covid-related deaths and another 226 confirmed cases as numbers across the country continued their gradual decline.
However, outbreaks in schools remain problematic for health authorities, who maintain that transmission in schools is not a cause for concern.
Last week it was learned that confirmed cases of Covid-19 among school-age children increased exponentially during the month of October and into November.
According to official statistics compiled daily by the Health Protection Surveillance Center, around 54%, or 3,163, of the cases of children aged 14 and under were recorded in October, the second month that schools were open after of the first wave of the virus.
Since September, the HPSC has detected 85% of the cases in children in that cohort.
However, HSE and Nphet insist that transmission in schools is negligible.
At HSE’s weekly briefing on the virus last Thursday, Paul Reid, its chief executive, said that family settings remain “a major factor” in cases, “schools, not so much.”
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