Ealing schools hit with rise in Covid cases
AROUND 70% of schools in Ealing have coronavirus cases as the borough continues to grapple with the highest infection rate in London.
Across the borough’s 98 statefunded schools, 70 currently have live coronavirus cases, as of Thursday October 30.
Ealing Council revealed this amounted to 264 recorded positive cases.
Currently the number of ‘outbreaks’, which means two or more cases at a site were directly linked, stands at three, while a further 24 ‘clusters’ have been confirmed, where two or more children or staff tested positive but are not believed to be linked.
On September 24, the borough’s public health director said just 23 schools had reported coronavirus cases at that point.
An Ealing Council spokesperson said: “We continue to work with schools to keep them safe and open for pupils and staff.”
However, Ealing’s National Education Union (NEU) district secretary Stefan Simms said head teachers and staff are at “breaking point” over the pressure put on schools since pupils’ full return in September.
He said: “The area of concern is workload because staff and head teachers have been putting in huge amounts of time and efforts for a long period of time.
“Head teachers are at breaking point – they are doing everything they can but they are not being supported.
“Staff are having to teach children at home and in lessons they can’t cope much longer either.”
There are also fears for vulnerable staff, who were initially told to shield earlier in the year, but are now still expected to work at the school sites.
Mr Simms added: “We are getting concerned for the safety of our more vulnerable staff because if they pick up the virus they could die, or could get Long Covid or spend a long time in hospital.”
Last week, Ealing Council leader Julian Bell urged residents to follow the new Tier 2 rules, revealing that households mixing was among the top reasons for the virus spreading.
He also laid blame with the government’s “failure” over the national test and trace system.
According to government guidance to schools, anyone who has been in close contact with someone who has tested positive at the school must be sent home to self-isolate for 14 days since they were last in close contact with the person with confirmed coronavirus.
This includes having a face to face conversation with someone within one metre, or being within one to two metres of that person for more than 15 minutes.
When outbreaks of coronavirus within a school are suspected, the government says health protection teams working with the school may recommend larger numbers of students to self-isolate, or “perhaps the whole site or year group”, as a precautionary measure.
Meanwhile, Mr Simms said that schools are doing their best to make the government’s “impossible demands” possible, but that it was a “chaotic” way to keep schools open.