Johnson: Sending kids to school is healthy and safe
BORIS Johnson has sought to reassure worried parents about sending their children back to school.
The PM and Deputy Chief Medical Office Dr Jenny Harries fielded questions about the return next week in a Q&A session on YouTube.
Mr Johnson said: “It’s the single most important thing on the agenda of our country in the next few days.
“Absolutely every pupil needs to be back in school next week and in the course of the succeeding days as schools go back.”
He added: “Now is the time, when a school is safe to go back to and it’s in the interests of the wellbeing and the health of children and young people to be back in schools, rather than missing out as they have been doing.
“It’s the healthy, safe thing to do.” Dr Harries appeared to suggest wearing face coverings in schools was as much about reassuring people as it was about the science.
She said: “It has both the science element and a supportive element in the middle of what has been a very worrying period.” Scientists have said it was “vanishingly rare” for children to be killed by coronavirus as a study found no deaths among healthy children.
Researchers found children’s risk of being hospitalised with the virus was “tiny” and the risk of needing critical care was “even tinier”.
The study, published in the BMJ yesterday, found six children had died – around 1% of those examined – who all had serious underlying health conditions.
Experts behind the largest study of children with Covid-19 in the world said parents should feel reassured to send their children back to school next week.
Prof Calum Semple, of Liverpool University, said: “Severe disease is rare and death is vanishingly rare.
“Parents should be confident that their children are not going to be put at direct harm by going back to school and we do know that they are harmed by being kept away from school because of the lack of educational opportunities – and that’s affecting mental health.”
Dr Olivia Swann, of Edinburgh University, said she found the study “extremely reassuring”.