Coronavirus outbreaks in schools will be inevitable

Your biggest concern is what will happen to your child when school starts. If you feel unwell, you should isolate him in a separate room at the school, according to current guidelines.

However, this will be a difficult mission, because many schools do not have these spaces, and the school doctors who must classify the children are very few and most of the time they attend to children from several schools.

So the teachers will have to classify them in the morning. Things can get complicated when more than one sick child can show up at a school at a time, because more isolation rooms would be needed.

Despite all these problems, many parents are afraid to send their children to school.

Epidemiologist Geza Molnar says outbreaks in schools will be inevitable.

Dr. Geza Molnar, epidemiologist: Isolation, where? They are very nice theories, but in practice, in 40% of our schools, especially in rural areas, it is impossible to respect. If there are two or three in a class, do I put them in the same room or in 3 different rooms? That one may have a simple seasonal rhinovirus and another may have a COVID-19 onset.

Dra. Claudia Strâmbeanu, Society of Physicians of Children’s Communities: A child with suspicious signs and symptoms of COVID-19 must be isolated, and this will be a challenge in all schools, to find a suitable space.

Eugen Ilea, president of the National Federation of Parents Associations: Some of the parents have children who are in the risk category or the parents are in the risk category and for them we do not yet have the option of not sending their children to school. At least in Bucharest, schools are prepared to deal with such a hybrid scenario, where some children can go to school and others can see in real time what is happening in the classroom. We have a mass of schools and the green scenario is impossible to implement.