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Schoolchildren in Hamburg: With 78 percent of the students who tested positive, one is relatively sure that they had not been infected at school
Photo: Daniel Bockwoldt / picture alliance / dpa
Should the schools remain open?
This question is being hotly debated these days.
The problem with the debate: There are still no reliable figures as to whether schools are the drivers of the pandemic or relatively safe places to learn.
So far, it is only clear that children from the age of around twelve become infected with the coronavirus just as often as adults.
But "the fact that you are a student does not mean that you have to have been infected in school," says Hamburg's school senator Ties Rabe.
The Hamburg education authority has now presented a data analysis that supports the assumption that schools do not contribute significantly to the spread of the virus.
For this purpose, the authority, together with the Institute for Educational Monitoring and Quality Development (IfBQ), traced and evaluated where pupils who tested positive between the summer and autumn holidays were infected.
According to this, there were 372 infected students at the time, and in 78 percent (292 cases), tracing means that they were relatively sure that they had not been infected at school.
However, this could not be ruled out for the remaining 22 percent (80 cases).
Usually only one known case per school
A look at the number of schools affected confirms this picture.
According to this, 171 of the 472 Hamburg schools reported corona infections among their students between August 4 and October 4 of this year.
But only in 23 of the schools affected (13.5 percent) there were multiple infections at the same time and only in 17 schools (10 percent) this was probably due to internal school infections.
However, the study can only provide clues, Rabe clarified.
For example, there is no information about the number of unreported cases, i.e. schoolchildren who have become infected unnoticed.
Conversely, in the case of adolescents in whom the infection was attributed to school attendance, it cannot be ruled out that the pupils were infected at private meetings after school.
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It should also be clarified why the infected people were particularly often pupils at school.
According to Rabe, the investigation revealed that for every infected elementary school student there were two cases at a grammar school and four at a comprehensive school.
While the difference to the primary schools can be explained by the generally lower number of cases among children, the authority hopes that further studies will answer the question of why comprehensive schools are particularly affected.
"We can control that"
Lothar Wieler, President of the Robert Koch Institute
According to Rabe, the ministers of culture have agreed to commission an independent scientific institute to carry out further investigations.
But quick results are not to be expected.
Time is of the essence.
As early as next Wednesday, the prime ministers want to exchange ideas with Chancellor Angela Merkel about further protective measures, including at schools.
RKI President Lothar Wieler said on Thursday in Berlin that he saw no reason to generally close schools and daycare centers.
The incidences in children under twelve are lower than in other age groups.
Children tended to run after the infection process.
"We can control that," emphasizes Wieler, adding that the prerequisite is that "the smart concepts" that the schools have developed are also implemented.
Focus on leisure time instead of schools
The current core of the debate is whether at least the secondary schools, as recommended by the RKI for some time, should split the classes and teach alternately at home and at school.
Parents and teachers' associations as well as student representatives are also increasingly calling for this.
Hamburg's Education Senator Ties Rabe, on the other hand, said that he was reported back to the headmaster's conference on Thursday that the majority - like himself - were in favor of face-to-face teaching.
"If we want to cope with the pandemic, then we have to focus not only on school operations, but much more on the many other areas of life and schoolchildren's risk of infection," said Rabe.
According to him, the school principals also observed that the pupils implement the protective measures in the school relatively conscientiously, but that the discipline in front of the school gate then subsides.
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With material from Reuters