British children are preparing to return to school on Monday after a two-month closure
The reopening of schools is the first step in the UK government’s plan to phase out COVID-19 restrictions as the country’s vaccination campaign gains critical mass, with all barriers lifted by June.
As part of the plan, millions of high school and college students returning to UK classrooms will be tested for the virus for the first few weeks. Authorities want to quickly detect and segregate asymptomatic cases so that they do not send whole schools home.
“We have been careful about our approach so that we do not reverse the progress we have made so far,” Johnson said in a statement, urging everyone who deserves the to be vaccinated.
Secondary schools and colleges will be allowed to reopen in stages to allow three test rounds. Students are then given tools so they can prove themselves twice more at home. The UK government has distributed nearly 57 million “late stream” rapid test devices to schools across the country, but there are concerns about the reliability of the tests, which pupils may be forced to self-destruct. separate by themselves unnecessarily
A senior public health official, however, said Sunday that the risk for false positives was very low. More than 5 million rapid tests were conducted at schools during locksmiths, including 1 million last week, the government said.
Test evidence over the past eight weeks shows that “the risk for the wrong things is very low, less than 1 in 1,000,” said Susan Hopkins, COVID’s director of strategic response. -19 for Public Health England, tells the BBC. “And a test that returns less than 1 in 1,000 false positives is a very good test.”
To help children who have been forced into online learning for months to get on with their education, officials are considering extending school days, shortening the summer holidays or adding an extra term to the year. British students have much shorter summer vacations than American students, usually leaving for summer vacations after mid-July.
“We are looking at a wide range of measures,” UK Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told Sky News. “We need to look at what is going to have the biggest positive impact on children’s lives.”
Britain has the deadliest coronavirus outbreak in Europe, with nearly 125,000 lives lost to date. Its coronavirus vaccination program, however, has raced ahead of the United States and the European Union to deliver the first dose to nearly 22 million adults nationwide.
Britain has agreed three vaccines for use: those made by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, and plans to vaccinate all adults by July.
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