Concerned about the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, 50 health professionals are asking the government to postpone the start of the school year in a column published in the JDD this Saturday. A recommendation they make while a health defense council dedicated to Covid-19 is scheduled for Monday.
They are worried about the increase in hospitalizations of children in recent weeks and believe that the trend will soon be accentuated: “We expect an unprecedented wave in the coming weeks of care for children with the syndrome. pediatric multisystem inflammatory disease (PIMS), as well as sequelae linked to the development, in some cases, of a lasting form of the disease (“pediatric long covid”) ”.
Favor caution at the start of the year
According to them, “the role of the school is not debatable” in the transmission of the virus and the means deployed so far by the Ministry of National Education to curb the epidemic in the establishments are “weak”. “One of the first clusters of the Omicron variant was also detected in schools,” they also recall.
Consequently, these 50 caregivers are calling for a postponement of the start of the school year, scheduled for January 3, “with recourse to distance education until the return to thresholds of health indicators defined publicly”. They also recommend “a clear fight by the Ministry of Health against disinformation on the epidemic situation among children and against the denigration of the vaccination campaign”. Because according to them, “some experts, who continue to minimize the impact of Covid-19 on children and question the value of vaccination for children aged 5 to 11”.
Jean-Michel Blanquer opposed for the moment to this idea
For now, an extension of school holidays beyond January 3 is “not the preferred scenario” to curb the Covid epidemic and would only be decided as a “last resort”, said last week the Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer on BFMTV.
“The incidence rate in the general population is a criterion, but it is less valid now because a lot of people are infected, that doesn’t necessarily mean much if there are a lot of people vaccinated. It is the saturation in hospitals and in intensive care units that is important ”to watch, he recalled.