So far, the following applied: In the case of PCR-confirmed corona cases in schools or daycare centers, the contact persons also had to be in quarantine. This is now being relaxed: only children and teachers who have tested positive have to isolate themselves.
New quarantine rules apply in Berlin daycare centers and schools. According to rbb information, the district doctors agreed on this unanimously on Wednesday.
In the future, contact persons of people who tested positive for PCR will no longer have to go into quarantine. “The obligation to segregate will only affect infected staff and children as well as their household members in the future,” said the Neukölln City Councilor for Health Falko Liecke (CDU).
The Senate Department for Health confirmed this at the request of rbb | 24. “In school and daycare, only those who have tested positive stay at home.” The responsible health department decides on exceptions.
“With this new regulation, we enable Berlin families to return to normal in daycare centers and schools,” said Liecke. Education and participation would now be given priority. However, the decision was not made easy, according to Liecke. “The abandonment of the containment strategy in daycare centers and schools increases the risk of chains of infection among the children.” However, these would usually have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.
In addition, the number of hospitalized children under the age of 14 remains “stable in the double-digit range,” said Liecke. Since it is foreseeable that children up to the age of twelve will not be vaccinated, it must be assumed that they will become infected despite containment measures. However, in his view, children are not pandemic drivers, said Liecke. “With the change in strategy, we are strengthening the chances of our children growing up well, healthy and age-appropriate.”
Starting next week, a rapid antigen test will be carried out on each child at Berlin schools only twice instead of the previous three times a week. In the daycare centers, it is still mandatory to test children and staff twice a week.
In the meantime, experts from pediatric and adolescent medicine as well as epidemiologists and virologists have spoken out in favor of a new corona course in schools. “So far, all measures in schools have been based on the maxim of preventing any infection in the local context. In the meantime, the basic conditions have changed so that this principle should be put to the test,” write the President of the German Society for Children and adolescent medicine, Jörg Dötsch, the epidemiologist Gérard Krause from the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig and other scientists in a guest contribution for the “Time”.
The experts write with a view to the vaccinations that adults now largely have protection against severe Covid 19 disease in their own hands. “For this reason, and since children only very rarely get seriously ill with Covid-19, it no longer makes sense to try to prevent every single infection in school at any cost.”
At the same time, they are calling for the virus to be prevented from spreading unchecked in schools, as otherwise the absolute number of illnesses in children would rise sharply – even if the proportion of serious illnesses after an infection “including Long Covid” is low. The authors appeal to continue to apply the “necessary hygiene rules” and advocate systematic tests and school-specific quarantine rules. For vaccinated students aged twelve and over, the quarantine requirement could even be omitted entirely.
Broadcast: Inforadio, August 27th, 2021, 5:00 p.m.