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Although some will be disturbed, there is nothing surprising in the news that a Dublin primary school had to send a pupil home after testing positive for Covid-19.
Everyone from the Taoiseach down has warned that this is inevitable given that the virus is circulating at a time when so many pupils are finally going back to school.
A distinction must be made between an isolated case, as this appears to be so far, and a larger outbreak, although even these may involve as few as two cases.
An additional distinction should be made between cases of pupils arising outside of schools, in the community, and infections transmitted within the classroom.
Internationally, the vast majority of infections among schoolchildren originate outside the educational system, usually involving transmission from parents to children at home. If, as seems likely, this case follows this pattern, it means that the school is no more “responsible” for the infection than the health service of the personnel who contracted the virus during the holidays.
No evidence
School outbreaks have not been a prominent feature of the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide and there is no evidence to suggest that children are the main driver of virus transmission (as opposed to the flu).
They can become infected and spread the disease, but there is no reason to believe that schools are different from any other communal setting in terms of the risk of spread. Transmission rates for children are low, the Health Information and Quality Authority concluded last month after reviewing the admittedly limited international evidence.
What matters now is how schools react to cases. It appears that principals across the country have used the summer months in a useful way to prepare to reopen their classrooms as safely as possible.
Physical separation
Risk levels are being minimized through physical separation, staggered opening hours, masks for teachers and older students, hand washing education, and other infection control measures. Although nothing is certain, the education system has given itself the best possible opportunity to minimize infection.
You may not know this from much of the overly pessimistic coverage of the reopening of the education system. There were reports of 41 schools closing in Berlin due to outbreaks, but not of their subsequent immediate reopening, or the fact that there were no more than 41 cases involved, or that affected schools accounted for less than 5 percent of all schools in the city.
The fact is, children are the least affected by Covid-19, and as long as infections are quickly identified (a faster test would help), the impact of the virus in the classroom can be minimized.
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