How much the coronavirus is currently spreading among children and adolescents in the Munich district cannot be roughly anticipated with a look at the District Office’s website. Nine schools and four childcare facilities are listed there, where quarantine measures currently apply. That sounds manageable compared to the city of Munich, where the local health officer Beatrix Zurek spoke of a “highly dynamic” infection process last week; more than 300 students were caught there. In the meantime, however, it is clear: it is no different in the district. District Administrator Christoph Göbel announced on Monday: There are 96 positive cases in a total of 63 facilities.
But why so few schools and daycare centers appear on the list, which thus conveys a more relaxed infection process, is solely due to the bill that the district office opens. It is by no means all facilities in which at least one positive case is currently known. Rather, only those schools and daycare centers are listed where the quarantine of contact persons is still ongoing. Since, unlike in the previous school year, you can test yourself freely after five days, i.e. end the quarantine by submitting a negative test, a completely different impression is created.
Explore the country and people around Munich: Every Thursday with the best leisure tips for the weekend. Register for the newsletter for free. Click here for registration.
Image: SZ
Göbel frankly admits that many schools are now affected. “In terms of the numbers, we are always pretty much the same as the city of Munich,” says the district administrator. That is also logical, since the virus does not stop at the city-district border. If there are significant deviations, then there is usually something wrong with the statistics.
However, Göbel also refers to the regular tests that are carried out on schoolchildren. And since corona tests are no longer free for everyone among the rest of the population, the proportion of student tests is much higher, although it is a comparatively smaller population group.
If you were to send entire classes home into isolation, as during the previous corona waves, when a child tested positive, there would already be many empty classrooms in the district. As a rule, the quarantine now only applies to those who have had direct contact with the sick person. The decision on this is made by the health department. However, if more than one positive case is detected in a class and this can be traced back to the contact in the school, this will be rated as an outbreak. Then the whole class has to be quarantined. In the schools that are on the district office’s quarantine list – five elementary schools, two high schools, one middle school and the FOS / BOS – currently only several contact persons and not entire classes had to be sent home. This currently affects 51 students in the district.