The next corona wave in autumn could mean that, despite open schools, many children have to stay at home again – as contact persons, although they are not infected themselves. That could be prevented with intelligent strategies.
Imagine the schools are open and no one goes. Parents and children could experience this in autumn. Because then there will in all likelihood be a considerable wave of corona infections again, especially among young, still unvaccinated people. And infected people and their contact persons will then have to stay at home unless they have been vaccinated.
For Germany’s schoolchildren this can mean: After two bad years, there is finally a winter in which nobody dares to close schools – but they still often cannot go there. Again and again you will be the contact person. Again and again that means: stay at home. For some children there will be a considerable amount of absenteeism.
Many absent days caused by the pandemic could be avoided with creative strategies
A look at Great Britain basically says it all. The incidence there is already 488. Almost all measures were abolished there on Freedom Day. But the isolation obligation for infected people and their contacts still applies. This is why there is now no one left in some supermarkets to fill the shelves; the garbage is not picked up and there is a lack of staff in hospitals. For the young people in the country, however, the consequences are particularly severe: More than a million adolescents were absent from classes in England last week because of Covid-19 – almost one in six.
This can also happen in Germany if too few people get vaccinated by autumn. It would therefore be important to start thinking now about ways that make it possible for children and young people to go to school despite the fourth wave. Because of those who stay at home as contact persons, very few have Corona themselves. In England, the suspicion was not confirmed in more than 98 percent of the cases.
An alternative to the all-round quarantine could be intensive testing. The University of Oxford has just tested this in a study with around 200 English secondary schools. In half of the schools, the contact persons of infected people remained in quarantine for ten days, as required by the official regulations. The other half were tested every morning (instead of twice a week as usual) and only had to go home if they were found to be infected.
Even if the study is not beyond statistical doubt, the testing was apparently just as effective as the isolation in preventing new cases. Because the corona virus was looking for a similar number of new victims in both school groups. At the same time, however, the absenteeism of the students could be reduced by 17 to 39 percent in this way. The potential benefit could be immense, the risk seems small. These and other creative strategies must be tested further and used in German schools. Because top priority must be that children and young people are not locked out of schools again. The psychological suffering of the young generation is already terrifying.