County health chief warns on school bubbles
EXPERT SAYS THEY SHOULD BE NO BIGGER THAN 30
SCHOOL bubbles aimed at restricting the spread of Covid-19 infections should not be significantly higher than 30 pupils, says Derbyshire’s public health expert.
Over the past few weeks dozens of schools across the county and city have sent hundreds of students home, days after returning from summer break, due to a small number of confirmed infections.
In some schools, notably secondaries, leaders have chosen to send entire year groups home due to, at times, a single case of Covid-19.
Dean Wallace, Derbyshire County Council’s public health director, has warned that bubbles which are of an unviable size ought to be reviewed. He agreed pupils being sent home for two weeks at a time on a regular basis was not sustainable.
He also urged employers not to put staff who must self-isolate while awaiting a test or after testing positive for Covid at a disadvantage and losing out financially for doing the right thing.
Mr Wallace said: “We have had people getting tested just to see if they have Covid-19 or not, we have had people getting tested because they think they might have come into contact with someone who might have had it and we have had whole classes going to get tests because one child might have Covid.
“We need to be prioritising tests for key workers and those who are symptomatic, we need to rein this in. There is an issue with some of the size of the bubbles and how they have been interpreted. A bubble that is significantly higher than, say, 20 or 30 creates a number of repercussions and you have to think that this virus spreads mainly in close distances, so it is unlikely that one child would have 100 or so close contacts, it is likely to be much smaller.
“That refinement needs to happen. That should come as more people get used to it.
“We are walking a fine line in all of this. We need to make sure bubbles are appropriate and risk assessments are robust to determine who needs to self-isolate following a confirmed case. We need to err on the side of caution.
“I think things will improve but schools can only do so much – they can’t control what happens out of the school and what we are seeing is cases found in schools are linked to transmission outside, in the community, and then being brought in.
“We are not seeing any sustained transmission in school.
“I’m not saying that won’t happen at some point but it points to what people are doing outside of the school that is the cause.
“People need to follow the guidance all the time, such as reducing physical contact and absolutely never going within two metres of another person outside of your home.
“If everybody can do that, as difficult as that is, it would get us to a better position in terms of infection rates and spread.
“If everybody outside school does social distancing and the rest of the measures, the risk in the school becomes much less.
“School can be a safe haven and offer some normality and the risk in school needs to be counterbalanced with the risk of long-term mental and physical damage to children.
“A lot of the transmission is coming from younger people meeting outside school. This virus will find the vulnerable people.
“We have to have conversations with our kids about how they act around others and around their grandparents.
“None of this is easy, but I’d rather have those sorts of conversations now and do that for potentially the next six months than have some serious repercussions affecting parents, grandparents and inlaws that lasts with our kids for their lifetime.
“Everything we do impacts on someone around us and we can’t just think of ourselves as an island and doing what we want with our freedoms, this virus will spread and will rip through the population.”
Mr Wallace said: “The message to employers is ensure that where staff are being asked to self-isolate that employers continue to make sure those staff don’t suffer in terms of their salary while they are waiting for a test or results and staff take responsibility to self-isolate until they can get a test and in the absence of a test, self-isolate until that period of 10 days has passed.
“It gets really complex when people on a minimum wage are not able to self-isolate.
“We are aware that some people have symptoms who have had tests and while waiting for results have carried on as normal. That’s not where we want to be.”