Forcing children to self-isolate ‘needless’
Oxford study suggests Covid can be controlled better by tests than quarantine
FORCING hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren to self-isolate because a classmate had Covid was unnecessary as daily testing would have been as effective, an official study suggests.
The results of the study by Oxford University have emerged on the last day of term for most schools, at a time when more than a million pupils are off because of the virus and after months of disruption to education.
Since June, The Daily Telegraph has been running a campaign calling on ministers to put children first as the country recovers from its Covid lockdowns, with action to bring an end to the chaos in schools.
The team behind the study said the results also offered reassurance for policy makers trying to end the pingdemic because it showed that the virus could be controlled in a less “destructive” way, as latest figures revealed that up to onemillion people a week are now being asked to isolate in England and Wales, with record numbers being “pinged” by the NHS app.
The Oxford study, which was conducted in collaboration with the departments of health and education, found that 98.4 per cent of children who were sent home for 10 days never went on to develop Covid, a result set to anger parents and pupils who have been forced to stay at home needlessly.
Schools that tested pupils daily instead of requiring them to self-isolate experienced 4 per cent fewer cases, which experts said may be because infected youngsters were more open about their contacts when the consequences were not so severe and so cases were identified more quickly.
Prof Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, said the study showed “unnecessary disruption” could be avoided with daily tests.
“It is always going to be tricky to define the relative effectiveness of isolation versus testing, as there are a lot of assumptions that need to be made. That aside, what this study shows is that daily testing rather than isolation of contacts is effective in preventing onward transmission.
“Crucially, it also highlights the unnecessary disruption that isolation rules have had on countless children.”
He added: “Isolation of contacts is an important weapon in infection control, but it is also crude. Rapid testing circumvents needless isolation, and it should be used more widely.”
Britain recorded nearly 10,000 fewer coronavirus cases yesterday compared with the same day last week, figures show, raising hopes that the epidemic may be slowing.
However, Public Health England (PHE) warned that case rates were still very high among younger people, with 1,154 per 100,000 infected among people in their 20s, the highest rate for any age group since the start of the pandemic, compared with 60.6 per 100,000 for the over-80s.
Since May, 6.2million people have been asked to isolate, according to the Adam Smith Institute think tank.
Tim Peto, professor of medicine at Oxford, and principal investigator in the schools trial, said their findings
could help end the pingdemic: “This will give comfort to people who want to work out a better and easier way to stop transmission than pingdemics and these rather destructive ways of controlling disease. It increases the opportunity for people to contain transmission in a much more comfortable and socially acceptable way.”
The schools trial, which ran between April and June, involved more than 200 schools, around half of which continued with normal rules, while the other half were allowed to test pupils instead of asking them to isolate.
Researchers found that of the 5,763 children who would ordinarily have been asked to isolate, the trial prevented them from missing 28,000 school days.
The Government has vowed to scrap the bubble isolation rules in the new school year and replace them with a daily testing regime, but yesterday it extended the funding for its virtual school until Easter in an indication pupils may still need to learn at home.
There is growing unease about the number of people in the general population being asked to self-isolate with shops running out of food, rubbish collections missed and businesses forced to close because of a lack of staff.
Latest statistics show 607,486 people were asked to isolate as a result of the app in the week ending July 14 – the highest on record – while 475,465 received a call or message from NHS Test and Trace after being identified as a close contact of a positive case.
However, there has been a drop in the number of positive cases agreeing to hand over contacts, or respond to messages from contact tracers.
Ravi Gupta, a Cambridge University professor and member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag) advising the Government, said the measures were “creating confusion and havoc”.
He told Sky News: “I think it is a little bit difficult to justify people doing selfisolation when in fact we have held huge sporting events with large amounts of transmission that have probably gone undetected.
“So it’s a sort of half-hearted measure that is affecting the lives of many people, many of whom will be depending on their income on a daily basis, and for whom a week of isolation is disastrous.”
However, Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, warned that bringing in changes too early risked a new spike.
“Public compliance is incredibly important,” he said: “I think you run the risk of infection rates running away with us and challenging the strategy of transition.”