The corona wave rushes through the Munich schools: 5,000 students are in quarantine - and to top it off, there are also problems with the PCR pool tests.
Munich - Noah and his mother needed a lot of patience: On Thursday (November 25th) the seven-year-old was tested for Corona with his classmates - they had to wait a long time for the result.
"I am a single parent and wanted to give Noah to my grandparents for the weekend," said mother Elisabeth Niedermaier on Friday afternoon.
“Up until now I didn't know whether that would work at all.” Noah no longer even goes to lunchtime care.
"If someone there is positive, the whole group has to be quarantined."
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Corona situation at Munich schools: thousands in quarantine, countless infected - chaos over tests
According to a spokesman for the health department, “a very dynamic infection process can currently be observed in Munich schools”. A good 2,100 students and employees were infected with the virus on Thursday. There were even around 5,000 students in quarantine who either infected themselves or had contact with someone infected.
The tests do not always run smoothly either, as Martin Schmid, chairman of the Munich Teachers' Association (MLLV) complains.
“It's a catastrophe right now,” he complains.
Primary and special school students give a saliva sample twice a week.
First of all, all samples are examined together.
"If a pool has tested positive, the individual samples are evaluated," explains a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health.
In this way, the affected child can be identified.
But: "More and more often the results don't come in time," says Schmid.
Corona in Munich: Laboratories are busy
The Ministry of Education confirms that the laboratory capacities are "currently heavily used". "That is why the schools were informed that there may occasionally be late responses to the pool tests and that the intended response period has been extended to relieve the laboratories currently in use," said a spokesman. In Munich there was also a technical malfunction in a laboratory on Wednesday.
According to the Ministry of Culture, the aim is to have a pool report by 7 p.m. on the day of the test. In the event of a positive test, the individual samples should be evaluated “unchanged from 6 a.m. on the following day and in good time before the start of the class”. If it is not yet clear who is infected, only children who have received a negative test result are allowed to go to school. You also do a self-test. In the event that the pool test has not been evaluated by the start of the lesson, all children take a self-test.
“The teachers are always on call,” says Martin Schmid.
It happens that children who tested negative are already in school and further evaluations reveal that there is more than one infected person in the class.
"Then everyone has to go home again," says Schmid.
“The parents often don't understand that either.” What annoys him is that there are no pool tests for the teachers.
“The colleagues would feel more secure,” he says.
"The state would have a duty of care."
Corona situation in Munich's schools: parents worried
Some parents now also have a bad feeling.
"The teachers fight as hard as they can to ensure that lessons are safe," says the father of a primary school student on Rotbuchenstrasse.
“But the situation is getting out of hand.” For his daughter, it also took 48 hours for the class pool to be evaluated.
“It is an avoidable risk,” he criticizes.
The situation is also serious in daycare centers: groups are currently closed in 130 Munich facilities.
There is no compulsory test for daycare children, parents can receive free self-tests.
(cla / M. Hubert)
