Schools have opened. A surge of various infectious and contagious diseases like Common cold, Scabies occur among the kids when the school re-opens.
What about covid-19 ?
Schools play a major role in transmission and amplification of any case numbers. Covid-19 can not be an exception. Schools also reflect the community transmission, surge and trend of the disease.
Unfortunately paediatric and school infection data of our country is scarce. So I have used data from American Academy of Pediatrics to illustrate few points.
- Total number of Paediatric Covid cases from the onset of pandemic : 5.9 million.
- Number of New children cases in the week ending 30 September : 173,000
- This is less than the previous weeks. There were 8,50,000 new paediatric cases in last 4 weeks averaging 200,000 new cases per week.
- At present the number of active cases in 0-18 years constitute 27% of the total active cases. This can be explained by in of vaccination in this age group
This is in consonance with the falling trend of Covid-19 every where.
Hospitalisations and Death (New York):
In New York City, There has been 615 children hospitalisation due to covid in the week ending on 30 September and 22 deaths.
School health:
how to keep our children safe and keep our schools Covid-19 free. data from our country is scarce. Here are some ideal practices collected from around the world.
Best practices in school
- Universal masking
- Regular testing
- Keeping sick children at home.
- Contact tracing of when cases are detected.
- Active cluster is defined as 5+ positive kids over a 2 weeks in a period over last 4 weeks.
- In that case the School is closed.
- All eligible kids are vaccinated.
Not all states obey these practices. But in states like California, Rate of school closure following cluster of cases are quite high.
Compiled by ରମାକାନ୍ତ ମହାପାତ୍ର
Dr Ramakanta's Ideas 