Return is ‘minor threat to virus spread’
SCHOOLS are ‘minor players’ in the overall transmission of coronavirus, a leading expert has said.
Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said ‘we owe it to our children’ to re-open schools – or risk doing them permanent harm.
He said parents should be ‘reassured’ by growing evidence from countries including Germany, Singapore and the Netherlands, which shows ‘little significant transmission in schools’.
Professor Viner, who also sits on the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group, said returning next month was likely to ‘add little’ to the reproduction rate of infection. Instead he warned of mounting evidence of children’s health declining from extended periods at home, prompting rising mental health problems and higher rates of obesity. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme reopening schools is one of the ‘least risky things we can do’.
He added: ‘We cannot be in a risk-free society and this is about the risk balance. It’s very clear for them the benefits and risks, the balance is for them to be back at school.’ Professor Viner highlighted the ‘higher rates of some concerning conditions’, observed in children’s absence from school. He added: ‘But we also know that young people aren’t getting the exercise they need, the sleep they need.
‘There is some evidence that they may be gaining weight, there’s a real wide raft of implications for children and young people.’ One of the most detailed studies yet, by Public Health England, is expected to show it is safe for schools to fully reopen.
Carried out at 100 institutions across the UK, it will say there is ‘very little evidence’ of coronavirus transmission where pupils have returned to the classroom.
While children can transmit this virus, experts believe they are not ‘superspreaders’ as feared and are also at much lower risk of harm from the virus.
Professor Viner said: ‘I think the message is, it can never be perfectly safe nothing in life is perfectly safe, but this is one of the better things we can do. And we owe it to our children.
He added: ‘There’s always dangers with evidence but I think the evidence from around the world is starting to become convincing that for younger children, particularly primary school children, that they appear to be less likely to catch this virus, and they don’t play a big role in transmitting it.’