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Every night the father and his son bike around the abandoned school building. In the afternoon, his mother puts him in the bicycle trailer and pedales to an abandoned meadow or a forest where they do not meet a soul. “We feel like criminals,” say the parents of the 5-year-old girl. In mid-October, authorities quarantined him for ten days because his kindergarten teacher had contracted the corona virus. In reality, the little boy, who never showed symptoms during this time, should not have left the city apartment with a small balcony and no garden. According to the instructions of the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG), he would have had to lock himself in a room with the door closed and eat there alone. His parents did not expect him to follow this strict regimen.
You are not the only one faced with the dilemma of breaking the rules in the face of child welfare. Messages from quarantined nurseries and school classes are on the rise. According to the FOPH, affected children should have as little contact as possible with their siblings and parents. After all, BAG recently relaxed quarantine regulations. Since 23 October, children have been allowed to go outside for a short time (“short episodes of fresh air”), of course without contact with people outside the family. Mini walks with mom or dad are no longer forbidden. The BAG also officially recognizes that the needs of young children in particular must be taken into account.
Child protection intervenes with the federal government
Regula Bernhard Hug, Head of the Swiss Child Protection Office, welcomes these steps. Child Protection Switzerland complained in a letter to BAG that the requirements were neither practical nor compatible with the best interests of the child. Bernhard Hug demands more adjustments, for example permission for “longer fresh air episodes”. “Breathing deeply outdoors would certainly help prevent conflict and domestic violence.” Bernhard Hug is also clear that children should not have fun in playgrounds during quarantine.
If a child tests positive, he must isolate himself. The BAG only writes that isolation measures should be individually tailored based on age.
says Bernhard Hug. She demands improvements here too. And: “You can’t just put food in front of a 10-year-old’s door and leave him alone. Sick elementary school children also need physical closeness and care for their well-being. “
Parents who feel unsafe regularly report to Child Protection Switzerland because there are no clear quarantine instructions and instead receive irritating “advice”. “It has happened that a contact tracker has advised parents to put a computer in their children’s room so that they can kill time in isolation with games,” says Bernhard Hug. “That shouldn’t be it. Who knows what kind of forums kids suddenly end up on.” Call on the Cantonal Medical Association to sensitize contact tracers about the problems of quarantined children.
Politicians consider the rules to be disproportionate and unreasonable
There are also voices in parliament in favor of children’s rights. The National Councilor of the CVP of Aargau, Marianne Binder, points out that, according to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children also apply in times of the Covid pandemic and guarantee the right to education, leisure and the game. “It is neither reasonable nor realistic to isolate children under the age of six. Not for the kids, not for the parents, ”says Binder. “Nota bene even if you are completely healthy.” In an interpellation, the CVP politician wants to know: What is the federal government doing to ensure that the quarantine practice meets the minimum criteria for child psychology?
National Councilor Irène Kälin (Greens, AG) agrees.
Kälin misses the proportionality of the quarantine rules. He would like to fully release children up to the age of six from quarantine and suggests further differentiations for children up to the age of twelve in a proposal.
The teacher advocates relaxation
Can a kind of quarantine light for children be justified from an epidemiological point of view? Just a few days ago, a crown outbreak made headlines at two kindergartens in Carinthia. Christoph Berger is Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Hygiene at Children’s Hospital Zurich. The teacher advocates relaxation. He bases his position on studies from Australia, Ireland, Scotland and the United States. “They show that children hardly infect other children and teachers if they adhere to the usual rules of distance and hygiene.” Children also rarely get sick after an infection. “That is why they transmit the virus much less to adults. And if the children stay with them, nothing happens to them. “
Berger is a co-author of the study “Ciao Corona” from the Institute of Epidemiology at the University of Zurich. The first results are already available. The researchers tested 2,500 school children to see if they had been infected with the new coronavirus since early June. 2.8 percent had antibodies. This value was similar to that of the randomly selected adults in this region. In children, however, the symptoms are nonspecific and not severe. “Children with or without detection of Sars-Cov-2 antibodies, for example, coughed the same or little,” says Berger.
There is also strong evidence that children barely contracted the virus from their peers in the school class, but mainly from adults in their private lives. 67 out of 100 classes were completely free of corona, in 29 there was a child with antibodies and therefore there was no infection in the class, in three classes two and only one three. Researchers do not know where these children were infected. For Berger, these findings by “Ciao Corona” support the famous phrase of ex-Mistercorona Daniel Koch: “Children are not the drivers of the pandemic.”
Berger has in mind: throughout the quarantine, children should be able to enjoy nature without restrictions if they avoid contact with people outside their family. If children cannot live out their natural impulse to move, this poses major problems. “Then there is a race across the kitchen table and there are jumps on the couch.” However, Berger would find it wrong to allow everything during the quarantine.
He suggests reducing the quarantine to five days for children if they are asymptomatic.
