Holidays for all students from Monday February 15th!
Here is the prescription of the doctors of the National Education.
Worried about the increase in the number of students infected with Covid-19, school closures and the spread of variants, the National Union of School and University Physicians (SNMSU) - the majority among the 800 practitioners dedicated to the 12 million pupils - asks that all schools close as quickly as possible, for the four weeks of winter holidays, while only zone A (Besançon, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon, Grenoble, Limoges, Lyon, Poitiers) has started his fifteen days off.
Objective: to cut the circulation of the virus, two weeks of winter vacation is not enough, according to them, to curb the pandemic in schools.
An opinion that joins that of epidemiologists, including Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the Scientific Council.
"In the field, we see a sharp increase in the number of contaminations among students, and we wonder about the increased role of variants", explains Marianne Barré, school doctor and secretary general of the SNMSU.
She assures him: she and her colleagues say "they will no longer be able to treat all the cases of Covid in a single day".
Investigate contact cases
Concretely, school doctors are responsible for investigating contact cases in schools, colleges and high schools, to identify "cases at risk" and to call to trace the contamination, including for teachers and staff. .
“Theoretically, it is up to the regional health agencies to do this job, but we are the ones who take care of it,” recalls Marianne Barré.
According to her, the change took place the first week of February: “From ten cases per day on average, I had to treat double!
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An urgent note from the Directorate General of Health (DGS) has reinforced the rules for isolation and closure of classes, in view of the spread of the British, Brazilian and South African variants.
For the moment, no study shows that these variants worsened the presence of the virus in schools, but specialists fear it.
Renaud Piarroux, epidemiologist and head of the parasitology service at Pitié-Salpêtrière, in Paris, believes that action must be taken by closing “the current places of transmission, in particular high schools, colleges and perhaps schools”.
According to figures from National Education on Friday, 934 classes are closed because of the Covid-19.
A small number, 0.17% of the 50,000 classes in the country, but more than twice the number of the previous week.
The fact remains that this position is isolated in the school world, rather favorable to the fact that the classes remain open and that the holidays are not extended in favor of distance courses.
"A dry closure would entail too great a risk of dropping out", summarizes Sophie Vénétitay, of Snes-FSU, the majority union of secondary teachers.
Moreover, within Unsa, school doctors had to explain themselves to other corporations, in particular teachers, school heads and school nurses, in the wake of their press release.
"They have a doctor's position"
"They have a position of doctors, but they are alone on this line," we remind Unsa.
What Marianne Barré does not deny: “We are on the health register, not educational.
Until now, we have always supported the maintenance of schools.
Today, it is no longer tenable.
The school doctors were contacted by the ministry, which sees in their position the "sign of concern" of a profession which feels under-equipped in its missions.
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Basically, if "no scenario is ruled out", not even that of an extension of holidays with the establishment of distance learning courses, the probability that the holidays will be generalized from Monday is low.
"This is not topical", insists in the entourage of Jean-Michel Blanquer, where it is recalled that one of the "compasses" of the Rue de Grenelle, the French Society of Pediatrics , has repeatedly reiterated his opposition to the closure of schools.
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The fact remains that in the event of an explosion of contaminations, if it is necessary to announce, at the heart of the holidays, an extension of holidays, and therefore a closure of schools with the establishment of the home class, the authorities will not hesitate .
“With the appearance of variants, we are all the more vigilant,” the ministry said.
What are the parents saying? "If the health authorities consider it imperative, we will comply," says Hubert Salaün, delegate of the Peep, federation of parents of students, himself a father in the Oise. In zone B, whose holidays begin on February 20, he only hopes that if the decision is taken, "contact will be established remotely between teachers and students, to avoid dropping out". What about parents forced to keep their children? “It would be a real difficulty. But this remains a lower cost solution: each family has already organized for the holiday period. "