By Tara Rippin • Published: 16 Feb 2021 • 14:25
Schools are safe to reopen and don’t spread Covid, claim NHS expert.
ACCORDING to Professor Saul Faust, who led UK trials of one vaccine people perceive schools as being places that cause transmission, but he doesn’t think this is true.
“Increasingly, we think transmission reflects the local society and environment around the school.
“For secondary schools, we have to be sure the rate of transmission around that school is low enough, not because it’s unsafe for children but otherwise it’s going to look as if children are getting Covid more,” Prof Faust told The Sun.
And a study carried out by researchers at the University of Warwick appears to support his claim, finding that school cases follow a rise in infections in the community rather than vice versa.
Dr Mike Tildesley said that “we are certainly not seeing overwhelming evidence that schools are driving risks in the community.”
Prof Sarah Lewis, Professor of Molecular Epidemiology, University of Bristol also reportedly claimed infections in school seemed to correlate with cases in the community five to seven days earlier, suggesting that infections in the community were spilling into schools rather than the other way around.
Boris Johnson has not revealed exactly when students in England will return to the classroom, but his ‘road map’ for easing measures on February 22 includes a provisional date of March 8.
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Tara Rippin is a reporter for Spain’s largest English-speaking newspaper, Euro Weekly News, and is responsible for the Costa Blanca region. She has been in journalism for more than 20 years, having worked for local newspapers in the Midlands, UK, before relocating to Spain in 1990. Since arriving, the mother-of-one has made her home on the Costa Blanca, while spending 18 months at the EWN head office in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol. She loves being part of a community that has a wonderful expat and Spanish mix, and strives to bring the latest and most relevant news to EWN’s loyal and valued readers.
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