Prime Minister Boris Johnson says opening British schools next month is a ‘moral duty’, and that in the event of a virus outbreak, ‘the last thing we want to do is close schools. ‘
To avoid the scenario Mr Johnson described on Monday, medical experts said, the government will have to be prepared to sacrifice a sacred British institution – pubs, such as restaurants, which reopened a few weeks ago but are becoming more and more seen as among the greatest risks for the spread of the virus.
The drive of Mr. Johnson to open schools has confused with teachers’ unions and local governments, who generally agree that schools should reopen, but argue that Britain’s system for testing and tracking contacts is not robust enough to to deal with the outbreaks that may follow.
The government, they said, had not developed plans for how teachers should treat sick students or communicate with parents in the event of an outbreak. Some of the back-to-school campaign, some said, tasted of a government that had emphasized other priorities, such as eating out in restaurants, and playing games.
“The big question is, if you open schools, how long can you keep them open?” said Devi Sridhar, Director of the Global Health Management Program at the University of Edinburgh. ‘If there’s a spread, do you close the whole school? Do you close one class? ”
Professor Sridhar said the safest way to open schools was to lower the transmission frequency – and the way to do that, she said, was to “shut down the night economy.” In the Scottish city of Aberdeen, they found, nearly 800 people were forced into quarantine because of an outbreak that authorities tracked down to a handful of pubs.
“My message is, you have to choose,” she said. ‘What part of the economy do you have to sacrifice? There must be something to give. ”
