The public should be prepared to see some outbreaks of COVID-19 in Irish schools in the coming months, according to the chair the National Public Health Emergency Team.

Nearly one million students are preparing to go back to school in the coming days along with over 100,000 staff.

Speaking to On the Record with Gavan Reilly this morning, Professor Philip Nolan said the international evidence “strongly suggests” that schools can reopen without major outbreaks or significant spread of the virus.

    

He said there will be some outbreaks around the country but they will be “relatively rare.”

“There is very little evidence for child to adult transmission in school settings and one of the reasons for that is that teachers and schools are taking appropriate physical distancing precautions,” he said.

“It is an unusual teaching practice but nonetheless, it is one we are all going to have to get used to in the coming year.”

He said we should be prepared to see cases and not “rush to the judgement that the disease is spreading in schools.”

“Much more likely, what we will be seeing is within households and between household transmission being picked up in schools,” he said.

Berlin schools

He also played down fears over the number of cases reported by schools in Berlin two weeks after they reopened.

“My sense is that we will see cases and outbreaks in school but the number will be low,” he said.

“There has been a lot of attention on the Berlin situation but over 90% of schools in Berlin are open and in those cases that we saw in Berlin, there is no evidence of within-school transmission.

“All of those cases appear to have been acquired in the household with perhaps one or two that are still under investigation.”

Guidelines

He rejected claims that there is a contradiction in health advice that blocks people from having more than six people in their home but allows 30 children in a classroom.

“The whole thrust behind the measures announced last week is that the virus needs opportunities to transmit and if we, as adults, severely limit our contacts and strictly limit our contact so we don’t provide opportunities for the virus to transmit then we can allow children back into those larger congregated settings – because the population-level opportunities for the virus to transmit are reduced,” he said.

“That means that allowing kids to contact each other doesn’t really present much risk of transmission because, first-of-all, kids are much less likely to have it and secondly even when they do congregate, they are much less likely to transmit it to each other.

“So, it is not a question of allowing children to carry the risk. It is a question of, if adults radically reduce their contacts, they reduce the risk of exposure in children and reduce the risk of any contact children might have.”

Health

Professor Nolan also warned that failing to reopen schools would have severe consequences for children.

“The risk of keeping people out of schools is very high and there is a strong socio-economic gradient,” he said.

“So, if we keep kids out of school for too long, we run a grave risk of damaging those children and in particular disadvantaged children.”

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