Ricardo Braginski
11/19/2020 3:32 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 11/19/2020 3:46 PM
There is less than a month to finish classes that never started inside Argentine schools.
With a lot of effort from teachers and families, practically all the boys in the country will
finish the school year at home
.
Argentina is among the countries that closed their schools the longest and all kinds of opinions are heard about this, but now
the first scientific evidence is emerging
, showing that keeping schools open,
at the primary level, does not generate more infections
.
This is what he told
Clarín
Marcos Espinal, director of the Department of Communicable Diseases and Health Analysis of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
He stated that preliminary research, in different parts of the world, suggests that
there is not a high transmission of the virus within schools in children under 12 years of age
.
Seventh grade at Colegio Los Robles, in the City of Buenos Aires.
Photo: Luciano Thieberger
The expert pointed out that, in general, the cases that appear in the schools that open,
happen because the boys bring the virus from their homes
.
And even cases of
"negative correlation"
were detected
, that is, the school helps to prevent the infection from spreading.
He said it in the framework of a regional press conference.
This Thursday, the director for Europe of the World Health Organization (WHO), Hans Kluge, joined this idea and said that
the closure of schools is not effective
to mitigate the pandemic.
He also warned about the damage to mental health it causes, as well as the increase in gender violence.
On the other hand, the data from Europe -where schools were opened in September, at the beginning of the school year there-, as well as those from other countries that also made it more flexible, allow us to infer that
there is no direct correlation between the opening of schools and contagions
.
Seventh grade at Colegio Los Robles, in the City of Buenos Aires.
Photo: Luciano Thieberger
Unesco has been following, day by day, what each of the countries did with their schools.
It establishes four scales for each day: with schools open, partially open, closed for academic recess (holidays) and closed due to Covid-19.
If these data are linked to the new cases per day in each of the countries -which have very heterogeneous school and health realities- it cannot be seen that there is a link between the two variables.
v 1.5
Class days in Argentina
Tap to explore the data
Source:
Johns Hopkins Univ. |
Unesco
Infographic:
Clarín
Here we must make a clarification: we must bear in mind that within countries there are regions with different health and educational situations;
that there are also other variables that explain the infections;
and that what Unesco shows as countries with "partially open schools" includes very diverse openness situations.
For example, Argentina has face-
to-
face classes
for only 1% of its students.
Marcos Espinal, from PAHO, warns that, in any case, we must always pay attention to the health situation and respect all care.
“We must not generalize.
It is
a combination of measures
.
Because in a community, with high transmission, perhaps it is better to do virtual education, and wait a while until that transmission goes down.
Now, when schools open, teachers must wear chinstraps, guarantee hand washing and provide schools with all hygiene items such as gel alcohol, disinfectants and others ”, he says.
The European experience of opening schools in the middle of a second wave may be useful to
think about next year in Argentina
.
Different results are seen.
From Spain, which recorded few outbreaks within schools, to Italy, which decided to close the secondary school again (with student protest) or the United States, with very heterogeneous situations depending on the county.
Argentina is among the countries that closed schools the longest.
More than eight months for 99% of the students.
According to a report by Cippec, today there are about 127 thousand who have face-to-face classes, out of more than 11 million enrolled students.
At least 6 out of 10 Argentine boys and adolescents still had no possibility of going to school under any modality, not even reengagement.
However, with schools closed,
infections did not drop drastically
.
Espinal insists that the evidence is showing that boys under 12 are not "strong transmitters", which is considered "super disseminators."
“We see it in studies carried out in Catalonia, Vietnam and Zambia, among others.
We must also take into account the problem that children have to
do virtual school for a long time
.
Above all, in mental health: there have been cases of extreme weight gain, obesity, different problems because they are isolated ”, he says.
“Preliminary evidence suggests that there is not high transmission of the virus within schools in children under 12 years of age.
When they are older, they do transmit as adults and you have to be more careful ”.
Spain
A group of young students at the Luis Amigo school, in Pamplona, in northern Spain.
AP
Spain returned to the classroom in September, after six months without classes.
Because of the forced closure of schools in March due to the health emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the summer vacation months were added between June and the end of August.
v 1.5
Class days in Spain
Tap to explore the data
Source:
Johns Hopkins Univ. |
Unesco
Infographic:
Clarín
Since June 21, when the Pedro Sánchez government put an end to the state of alarm due to the health emergency caused by the pandemic, it is the regional governments that manage the Covid containment measures in their territories.
And education, as well as health, is also the responsibility of each autonomous community.
The national Ministry set some common criteria, such as
face-to-face assistance in the garden, in primary and
lower
secondary levels
, the use of the mask in class, the distance between the benches and the creation of small groups (bubbles), which then
each autonomy adapts to your situation and your own calendar.
Each of the 17 autonomous communities that make up Spain regulated its own school calendar for the more than eight million primary and secondary school students who are attending this school year in the
more than 28 thousand schools
throughout Spain.
The Minister of Education, Isabel Celaá, downplayed the importance of some communities delaying the start of the school year: "The important thing is that the 175 school days that are marked are met," he said.
A teacher uses a digital thermometer to measure the temperature of students in Mungia, Spain.
REUTERS
"In Spain, according to data from the National Epidemiological Surveillance Network, until May 31, 2020, 1.37 percent of the total confirmed cases corresponds to the population between 0 and 19 years of age, a very low proportion compared to the total of confirmed cases ”, indicates a document that the Ministry of Education prepared in conjunction with the Ministry of Health to
justify its firm decision based on the fact that the classes are face-to-face and not online.
Two months after returning to school, the incidence rate of infections in Spain is 452 infected people per 100,000 inhabitants.
"We have to get to 60," says the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa.
By mid-September,
more than 200 schools throughout Spain already had some of their classes in quarantine
or had completely closed their doors due to having detected positive cases among teachers or students.
Even the class of Princess Leonor, the first-born of King Felipe VI who is in the fourth year at the private school Santa María de los Rosales, in Madrid, was confined after having started the school year due to the positive in Covid-19 of one of her companions.
"Children are not as contagious as we initially thought and transmission between them is less:
only 3 percent of cases affect children,
" the Minister of Education tried to reassure the Spanish.
"Throughout the course it is likely that practically all children, in one way or another, will become infected", was the unhappy statement of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
According to the Ministry of Health, up to October 29 there were 936 outbreaks in schools, which represents 8 percent of the total number of active sources of infection.
To this day, 5,693 positives had accumulated in the classrooms.
The inmates represented 1.6 percent of the total.
By then, the coronavirus had infected about 1,200,000 people in Spain.
Today the official figures speak of more than a million and a half infected.
From the start of the school year until October 30, the pandemic produced more than 10,000 positives in the field of education:
159 schools and 9,750 classrooms were closed, in addition to the number of infected teachers amounting to 1,578
.
These are data provided by the unions that clarify that 109 centers that had to close have already reopened but another 50 are closed.
Of the classrooms that were closed due to the pandemic, 2,574 returned to class while 7,176 remain closed.
Fifteen days ago, the Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Isabel Celaá, considered that the incidence of the coronavirus in schools is around 1 percent.
Italy
Protests
Students studying outdoors as part of a protest against the closure of secondary schools in Rome.
EFE
Less than half of the eight million students who entered the 65,000 primary, secondary and childhood schools are still present in the classrooms.
The second wave of the pandemic is wreaking havoc.
From 978 infected on the last day of September, in just one month it went down to 35,000 in October and the deaths reached 46,500.
The vast majority of the twenty Italian regions closed secondary schools, forcing them to switch to DAD, distance education.
They are more than four million.
v 1.5
Class days in Italy
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Source:
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Unesco
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"This is a defeat,"
said the Minister of Public Instruction, Lucía Azzolina, who highlights that
"the school is not a source of contagion
;
on the contrary, it is a safe place due to continuous control measures ”.
The minister plans to restore the presence of students in schools as soon as the worst of the second wave passes.
"
We want everyone to come back progressively."
The students agree and there have already been collective protests because
the vast majority claim to be able to be present with their classmates and friends and the teaching body
.
From the gesture of a 15-year-old girl, Maya, a student at a school in Turin, who has garnered extensive imitation and solidarity,
there are groups of students who settle in front of their schools and connect from there to computers
and follow the classes via Internet at a distance, but close to the place where everyone wants to be: the classroom.
Others prefer protest demonstrations.
The government is studying a project of union origin to bring
forward the Christmas holidays in schools,
prolonging them to further alleviate the process of social immobilization that is being sought with a mechanism that applies more or less flexible quarantines to lower the rate of infected and thus alleviate the avalanche of sick people, which is saturating hospitals and especially intensive care.
In the Apuglia region (south), the closure of secondary schools and the obligation to follow classes over the Internet cause many protests, but the situation of the epidemic has become so distressing that there is a risk that all schools will be closed directly , even the primaries.
The epidemiologist Pierluigi Lopalco, advisor to the regional government, said that “unfortunately the school is a factor that facilitates the spread of the virus, regardless of whether the contagion occurs in the classroom or outside (especially in the means of transport). .
"The decision has been long-suffering but necessary."
Secondary students in Rome.
AP
The ban on being present in the classroom also covers middle school in Apuglia, which lasts three years.
The primary-secondary cycle in Italy is different from the Argentine one.
It lasts 14 years, one more, and is divided into three parts: primary, middle and higher.
Six years, three years and five years.
According to the advisor Lopalco, "the management of health cases in schools has generated a huge workload."
He said that if the general situation worsens, it will be necessary to impose a total quarantine on the entire region, which will reduce the growth of the virus but will have a huge cost for the economy.
Lombardy, the largest region in Italy and the worst hit, was the first to close secondary schools by introducing distance education, while other regions such as Lazio, Marche and Piedmont forced secondary students to move from classroom to home.
The infections have been especially serious in the Lazio region, whose capital is Rome.
The numbers have grown rapidly and at the end of October, when the last official data were harvested, two thousand infected students, 361 teachers and 112 non-teaching personnel were registered in schools.
85% of those infected come from secondary schools, now subject to the distance education system.
It is estimated that the origin of the infections comes from public transport or the movement of adolescents themselves, but that
contagion in schools is a minority
.
This week the number of infected students rose to 3,000, but another 29,000 high school students are at home completing preventive isolation for having been in contact with those infected.
The reopening of the classrooms on September 15, after a school closure that lasted since March, when the first wave of the epidemic began, was preceded by
a formidable refurbishment work of the buildings that had a cost of 6 billion euros
.
The capacity of the classrooms was reduced by half and
a well-calibrated system of continuous control of the movements of the students was created,
with the obligation to permanently wear the mask and maintain a safety distance of two meters that was reduced by half the capacity of the classrooms.
This made it necessary to enable other buildings and other spaces.
In addition, since two students sat behind each table,
2.5 expensive one-person chairs with casters were purchased
and distributed throughout the country.
Special paths were created to come and go, enter or exit schools.
Special continuous sanitation measures.
A remarkable effort, now subjected to a severe test by the second, and more serious, wave of the pandemic.
Students take class in a classroom on the first day of remedial courses, before the start of the new school year scheduled in Milan, Italy.
EFE
In Palermo, the capital of Sicily, the "president" of the Giuliana Saladino Institute said that
"the virus does not spread in schools but outside the classroom."
He added that "we are experiencing an
educational catastrophe"
due to the total closure of secondary schools and the transfer to distance learning.
Walter Ricciardi, advisor to the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, pointed out that the restriction measures in secondary schools have reduced infections by 15% among young people.
He stressed that the group most at risk of infection is between 14 and 18 years old, that is, the age of secondary schools.
The Minister of Education, Lucia Azzolin argued with the other officials.
He stated that the national data on
infectious foci represented only 3.5% of the total in the country.
The scientist Alberto Villani, from the prestigious Roman pediatric hospital of the Child Jesus, also entered the controversy.
He said that
“the school is not a source of infectious sources or of positive cases
.
It is the safest place where the rules are respected.
And if a child or young person with a Covid 19 infection enters the classroom, it is very difficult for them to transmit the virus to their classmates, since they have a mask on (the chinstrap), they are obliged to continuously wash their hands or be at a distance from security".
United Kingdom
Students follow signs of social distancing as they walk down a hallway at Kingsdale Foundation School in London.
AP
Great Britain is in its second "lockdown" to save thousands of lives, in this new wave of Covid 19. But
its schools remain open
.
It has not been the government's plan to close the schools.
v 1.5
School days in the UK
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Source:
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Unesco
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The schools opened in September and the education department published a manual on how students and staff should stay safe.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson closed the country in different zones, called Tiers, in a status of 1 to 4. But he considered that
the closing of the schools would only be "the last of the last of the resources."
In October, it became known that half of the students in British secondary schools self-isolated as a result of Covid 19, between 6 and 7 percent of students in British public schools did not go to class because of the coronavirus, according to the Department of Statistics.
But there is a huge private education sector in Britain, unlike in France.
26 percent of those schools, excluding mid-term vacations, had at least 1 or more students in self-isolation due to potential contact with Covid 19.
“Clouds”
were created
so that young people could mingle with other students.
Those "clouds" remain at lunch time and recess.
It is to prevent the different groups from mixing to easily identify the one with symptoms. Books, games, laboratory equipment can be used only by that group within the cloud.
Older adolescents are encouraged not to maintain contact because they are more easily contagious. Teachers are not restricted to a single cloud but are forced to be in front of the class to reduce contact with students.
The students are separated by a space on each bench.
Children participate in gymnastics classes at St Dunstan's College Primary School in London, Britain.
REUTERS
The temperature of the students is not taken
, after the public health said that it was not a safe mechanism to detect symptoms.
If a child is infected, the school must keep in contact with the local health authorities, who send a mobile testing team to campus.
The NHS or health service should be contacted so that all social contacts of the student can be found and possibly isolated.
Teachers who help a child with symptoms should not isolate themselves, unless they have them too.
If parents insist that a child should go to school with symptoms, the principal may refuse to accept it.
Boys under 18 have completely different symptoms than adults.
Parents should know them before taking them out of school.
Unlike France and other countries,
the masks should not be used in classes
but in corridors and communal areas.
School equipment must be limited to avoid contagion.
The bathrooms are cleaned regularly.
Schools are in charge of the mental health
of their staff in times of pandemic, especially those who are eager to go to school, as well as their students.
France
Students at Clement Falcucci primary school in Toulouse, south-western France.
AFP
Schools, nurseries and lyceums (secondary)
are open in France in full confinement and without social distance
, 45 weeks after the start of the epidemic.
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Class days in France
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The productive link between parents who must return to their jobs, nutrition of the most disadvantaged students, schools with open canteens and the right to learn was an essential formula to
open and maintain the decision on the need to keep schools functioning
in this second wave of the Covid.
If the boys go to school, receive breakfast, lunch and tea before returning home, their parents can go back to the factory or do telework, without family interruptions.
The country's economy gets going.
The latest figures from the French Public Health show that
the number of positive students tripled in one week since November 12
.
At least 259 "clusters" or centers of infection are being investigated in schools and universities.
A rising incidence rate among boys aged 0-14.
During this
severe confinement
, which will end in France on at least December 1,
students must go to class from first grade and wear a mask from the age of 6
.
It is also the case of high schools, colleges and adult teachers.
Nurseries remain open.
The sanitary protocol is a combination of barrier gestures such as the use of masks, hand washing, regular aeration of the classrooms and a limitation of hugging between students to avoid contamination.
Aeration must be completed every two hours compulsorily.
In the school canteen (the dining room), social distance should be maintained as much as possible, the formation of groups and the mask is not used.
High school students play in the courtyard of College Henri Matisse school during its reopening in Nice, France.
REUTERS
But there are high schools that have too many students and do not have the necessary breadth for such a large educational population.
They asked for distance learning but it was rejected by the minister
, who does not want to lose contact with the students, as happened in the first wave.
The masks distributed by regional health agencies to poor teachers and students have not been sufficiently protective.
Many teachers buy theirs.
Health Minister Jean Michel Blanquer said that
“the school is not a nest of viruses.
Society cannot be lulled ”.
But a month after the opening of schools, Covid 19 has again overwhelmed hospitals in France.
There is an omerta for infections between teachers and parents, especially in close contact, where children and their parents want them to be isolated.
At the beginning of the school year there were other attitudes: the team of teachers went into quarantine in the face of a positive case but in the absence of replacements, they returned if they had no symptoms.
In the Ile de France there were 26 classes closed by Coronavirus in relation to the 57 of the previous week.
But not schools.
In this second stage the restrictions have been relaxed, the gel and anti-virus disinfectants are not in many places. Too many students cross in the corridors and wear the same mask for at least three days.
Belgium
A teacher wearing a protective mask talks to students in a classroom in Saint-Gilles - Sint-Gillis, in Brussels.
AFP
Belgium closed its entire education system during the first wave of the virus, starting in mid-March.
In June it opened again but only for three weeks before the summer holidays.
The test was considered successful because
no major outbreaks of infections were detected in schools
.
v 1.5
Class days in Belgium
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During July and August, and after many discussions between the federal government and regional governments, the authorities decided that
in September the education system would reopen.
Everyone, from kindergartens (which accept babies from four months) to universities,
returned to work in September according to the traditional calendar.
In addition, compulsory education was extended, as planned for two years, starting at five years instead of six years from this year.
The reopening was done with all possible health and social distance measures in an educational system.
For example, those over 12 years of age must wear chinstraps throughout the day.
Minors, from the age of three, are only related to those of the same age.
In school canteens
these “bubbles” are kept
and some groups are prevented from mixing with others.
There were few exceptional measures.
In Belgium Wednesdays are only for classes until noon.
Compared to the usual six and a half hours, that day there are only three and a quarter hours of classes.
After the reopening in September, it was decided that it would continue to be the case except for high school students, for whom Wednesdays became non-teaching so that they could stay home.
Pupils arrive at Olfa Elsdonk primary school in Edegem, Antwerp.
AFP
The educational authorities designed a scenario with four levels of risk:
green, yellow, orange and red
.
In September it opened with a yellow light: weak risk.
Two weeks later he switched to orange (moderate risk) and the secondary classes were divided into two groups: half the class continued to attend schools and the other half stayed at home every other day.
In mid-October it jumped to the red (serious risk), but there was never talk of closing again as in the European spring.
Those responsible for regional governments, who are competent in education, had said since July: educational activity will not stop "preschool and primary regardless of the progress of the pandemic."
For now, they keep that promise.
L
os Belgian experts believe that under 12 rarely fall sick Covid-19
and are very contagious.
Unlike what is traditional, the parents of the youngest (three to six years old) do not have access to the educational buildings and must leave their children in the care of the center's staff outside the center.
Normally we could walk into her class and talk for a few minutes each morning with her teacher.
The arrival of
the second wave has reinforced all these measures
.
Belgium decided that its traditional early November holiday week would be two weeks this year.
The education system returned this Monday to try to stay open for the next five weeks, until the Christmas break.
But neither secondary education (from 12 years old) nor university returned.
United States
Students wait with their parents before entering school at a New York elementary school.
EFE
The reopening of schools and universities in the United States began slowly beginning in September, the beginning of the school year there, with great caution.
It is
a very decentralized decision
, which is up to each county, according to the state of the pandemic, and since then they have had
many twists and turns.
v 1.5
School days in the USA
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There are districts that already have everything in person, others everything still in virtual form and others a hybrid with only some students present on a rotating basis.
Each school must submit to the county a protocol that must be approved.
In general,
private schools were the ones that first sought to reopen
.
They surveyed parents and teachers to see which modality they preferred.
They had initiatives such as dividing the students into three groups so that a third have face-to-face classes every 14 days in classrooms with social distancing.
The teacher can be present in the class with the few students and the rest of the students follow him virtually from home.
The teacher can also be giving the class from home.
Public schools are currently reopening less than private ones.
They have more students and more logistical problems, especially in less favored places.
In this last week, schools in several places in the United States have begun to close and many districts are postponing their plans to reopen due to the outbreak of coronavirus in the country, which may be aggravated by the proximity of winter.
Although the outbreak of Covid is generally associated with social gatherings and the non-use of the chinstrap in several states and not with the reopening of schools, in some places such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Diego, Sacramento, Minneapolis, DC and other districts are postponing or reversing reopening and kids will continue to take classes virtually with no fixed return date.
A large container of hand sanitizer, on a desk for students to use in second grade at St. Joseph Catholic School in La Puente, California, USA AFP
In other places like Texas, Utah, Michigan, Georgia and Indiana, some districts are closing schools that have already opened.
Some do it because the teachers are infected.
In New York City, the nation's largest district with 1.1 million students, classes were closed this week.
The contagion rate in New York City rose to 2.83% last week, but
in schools it remained just 0.16%.
The available evidence shows that school transmissions are not particularly significant, but the infection rate is increasing in the United States and so they
want to prevent it because winter is coming.
Universities are more complex because not only are classes a source of contagion but also life on campus.
Boys hang out, go to parties, etc.
More difficult to control.
Most also opened in September with virtual or hybrid mode.
Many opted for only newcomers and graduates to attend classes.
The boy could choose to stay on campus (with social distance, one student per room) or to stay at home and follow everything virtually.
Reports: Correspondents in Madrid, Rome, London, Paris, Brussels and Washington.