Schools return Covid tests for secondary pupils

TWICE-WEEKLY Covid tests will be offered to all Scottish high school pupils when they return to classrooms full-time after the Easter break.

Fresh guidance also says students, including those in S1-3, should wear face coverings in class and when they are moving around campus.

It comes ahead of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s lockdown update this afternoon.

However, the Scottish Conservatives have called on the Government to accelerate plans for the reopening of schools and gyms.

BORIS Johnson has warned there is a “big budget of risk” in reopening schools but insisted the biggest risk was not reopening them.

Welcoming the return of millions of pupils back to school in the first major easing of lockdown measures in England, the Prime Minister declared: “This has been a big day and an emotional day.”

He told a Downing Street press conference: “We all know that the education of our children is so important that the greater risk now is keeping them out of school for a day longer.

“I want to thank all the teachers who have got their schools ready and who have been teaching throughout the period. Whether that is remotely or in person, your work has been astonishing.”

Mr Johnson also thanked parents who had been teaching their children at home and noted that the burden had fallen disproportionately on women “often holding down jobs and providing childcare at the same time”.

He stressed the Government’s job now was to ensure pupils not only caught up on lost learning but took the “biggest possible step forwards with a concerted national programme for educational recovery”.

Dr Jenny Harries, England’s deputy chief medical officer, said that, while pupils returning to classrooms would have an impact on the R infection rate, schools would be “inherently safer places” due to increased testing.

She said: “We do expect there to be an impact on R. What we do know is, or at least we can’t disentangle, the social interaction element of that rise in R. So, it’s just as likely it’s people meeting at school gates or the different numbers of social interactions as much as it is in schools.

“The critical point is there are new interventions, so the testing for schools is in place, starting from now and gradually for some senior pupils going forward.

“What that is likely to do is diminish the number of community transmission cases which could come into schools, so schools will be inherently safer places, but equally it will reach back into families.

“So, although I suspect we may see a rise at the start, with luck as we go forward and people get used to using that testing whole families will be protected as well.”

Asked if he would consider speeding up the easing of lockdown, Mr Johnson said he understood the urgency but noted how there were thousands of people still in hospital with Covid.

He said: “We have seen, alas, in other European countries the curve is going up again and we remember frankly what happened every time we’ve seen those upwards curves in our friends and neighbours that it is not too long after that that we see an increase in this country as well.

“We’ve just got to remain prudent and the whole point about this road map is it is intended to be cautious but irreversible and we think we can do that because of the success of the vaccine rollout.”