Covid-19: Up to 1,200 schoolchildren a day forced to curb activity

Every day, about 1,200 schoolchildren are being forced to restrict their movements because they are deemed to be close contacts of Covid-19 cases, the HSE has said.

Niamh O’Beirne, the HSE’s national lead for testing and tracing, said that the high number of cases among children meant that health officials were having to contact about 120 primary schools and 80 secondary schools every day about new cases.

There was another surge in testing of young people over the weekend as about 30,000 people were tested at community sites, with young people making up the majority.

Ms O’Beirne said there was a 17 per cent increase in testing over the weekend compared with the prior weekend. Children are three times the number of other age groups being tested.

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The 155,000 tests carried out over the last week was “quite high overall for the year to date,” she said.

More than 12,000 schoolchilden are being forced to self-isolate at home for up to 14 days because they are deemed a close contact of a Covid-19 case under a rule that the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) is due to review at a meeting on Thursday.

“I think we will probably find it to be unnecessary,” HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry, a member of Nphet, said of the guidance.

“We just need to see the assurance in these first weeks of returning to school that we don’t see a huge surge in cases of Delta among schoolchildren and multiple outbreaks. The signs are positive so far.”

Declined

The seven-day average of new cases has declined over the past two weeks to about 1,400 a day.

Incubator

Dr Henry said that the experience so far was that the school and classroom were “not a real incubator of Covid-19. Child-to-child transmission is unusual in school settings.”

The HSE was seeing falling positivity rates against increased testing because of the interaction between children.

“All of this points hopefully towards a scenario where we see the Delta virus having an impact in terms of transmission but not having a significant impact in terms of childhood illness and in terms of disruption to children,” he said.

Asked about infectious diseases consultant Clíona Ní Cheallaigh warning that the virus could “rip through” schools and infect most children under 12 by next spring, Dr Henry said that was “one take” on a recently published scientific papers. The claim makes “a number of assumptions that can’t always be applied to the Irish situation,” he said.

Ms O’Beirne said that the reopening of schools and the circulation of viruses among children mixing again was behind the increase in the Covid-19 testing numbers.

“This happened also last year. Other viruses circulate when children return to school and parents and schools would like children to come forward for testing to know whether they have Covid or whether they have another virus,” she told RTÉ’s News at One.

“So that is also driving the amount of testing going on.”

Assessment

She advised school principals to wait for a public health assessment before deciding which students were close contacts. She said that the level of risk from asymptomatic children was “very low” and advised parents to keep symptomatic children at home.

“If the classroom doesn’t have children who have symptoms, the advice from public health is to wait until you have your public health risk assessment so you don’t risk taking too many children out,” she said.

There had been no scaling back in contact tracing on cases in schools and there was still the same capacity do so as before. Testing would be reduced when the pandemic becomes “endemic” but “we are not there yet”, said Ms O’Beirne.

“Whenever the threat from the virus has faded and it is no longer appropriate to restrict the movements of so many people if they are a close contact, we do expect in due course there will be a change to the testing policy,” she said.