Discuss how to return students to schools: a 5-step action plan is proposed

The expert report will indicate to the council members what action should be taken.

These include a pre-return test, lower classes, use of masks, ventilation and rapid isolation of symptomatic individuals, preventive cumulative tests, 24-hour monitoring. from smear to isolation, short 7-day quarantine and shoot sequencing.

When could I return?

The report also provides a possible time when classes could continue their studies in the form of contact. It is emphasized that this is just a discussion so far, and Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė assured on Monday that she will return to these issues after the students’ winter break, in the last week of February.

Thus, it is expected that primary school children can return to educational institutions when the municipality has 100,000. population in 14 days of texts from 150 to 200 cases.

Graduates: when morbidity falls to the limit of 100-150 cases per 100 thousand. population in 14 days.

And all the other students – in the quarantine scenario B, when the incidence in the municipality would be 25 to 100 cases per 100,000. population in 14 days.

In Quarantine Scenario A, all students are expected to learn by contact.

5 steps

The possible actions are divided into 5 main steps, highlighting that new strains of coronavirus can change this plan.

The first step is to put out the chimneys in the existing kindergartens. The second is the pilot schools: the return of primary school students with epidemiological control.

The Vilnius City Municipality announced such an attempt last week.

The third step is to return to other primary schools and high schools to contact education with epidemiological control. Monitoring with data systematization.

Fourth – with epidemiological control, the students of the remaining grades return to contact education.

The fifth: more than 4 weeks after the resumption of contact education, depending on the results of the follow-up and the prevalence in society, the transition from asymptomatic to follow-up tests.

Beginning

Mr. Beinort’s report also listed key principles that must be followed to ensure the safe resumption of contact education.

1. Before resuming the contact education process, turn off the current chimneys in educational institutions.

2. Individuals who must be in isolation (have COVID-19 symptoms, home patients with COVID-19 symptoms or diagnosis, recent contact of COVID-19 from abroad before <7d) should not enter the educational institution.

3. People who have experienced symptoms in an educational institution will be isolated immediately and without waiting for the testing process.

4. Before returning to the educational institution for the first time, all persons must have a negative PCR class test (to allow for a massive cumulative PCR asymptomatic test)

5. Strive to carry out the educational process in smaller groups: the probability of an outbreak is lower, fewer people have to isolate themselves during the infection.

6. Non-pharmacological preventive measures are applied in educational institutions: masks (for school children), room ventilation, hand hygiene, breaks at different times.

7. Preventive tests of asymptomatic people are carried out in the first weeks after the resumption of contact learning: every 7 days. Cumulative PCR or antigen test 2 times a week. Epidemiological surveillance.

8. The laboratory will communicate the test results to the designated person responsible for infection control at that facility.

9. From smear to isolation <24 h.

10. After 3-4 weeks, after evaluating the epidemiological impact and the results of the preventive tests, the decision is made to continue or suspend further tests in asymptomatic individuals. Transition to randomized follow-up tests.

What is a cumulative test?

T. Beinort defined that analyzing a set of 5 samples could be a division of a class or catenary into stable groups of 5 individuals, with their epithelium grouped in the same virological environment. Only cumulative tests are performed, so labs are not overloaded with additional reload work, the likelihood of lab errors is reduced.

If the accumulation is positive, the class should isolate itself. This would stop the spread of infection, for maximum tactical effectiveness, it should be done less than 24 hours after smear collection.

Individual reevaluations of positive individuals at mobile points, follow-up and isolation of positive contacts outside the educational institution would also be organized. Accumulated CRP for the isolated class on isolation day 7 and CRP: return of individuals to contact education.