You have 30% more risk of catching Covid-19 if you live with one or more children in school, 40% with a toddler in a nursery.
These figures published this Wednesday by the Terra Nova think tank are not new: they actually come from the ComCor epidemiological study by the Pasteur Institute, unveiled in mid-December, which aimed to understand the mechanisms of contamination by the coronavirus. in France.
But drowned in the midst of statistical data, they had gone almost unnoticed.
"The school is not a place of contamination stronger than the rest of society, it is even rather the reverse", yet assured Tuesday the Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer.
What Mélanie Heard, the coordinator of the health center of Terra Nova, author of the report published on Wednesday, strongly contests: “What struck me was the persistence of a speech saying that we had no certainties scientists on contamination in schools, while there is a fairly clear convergence of the discourse of epidemiologists.
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"Children are vectors of transmission"
By compiling international studies, including ComCor, the think tank arrives at this very clear conclusion: "The scientific knowledge accumulated over nearly a year leaves no room for doubt: children are vectors of transmission of the epidemic, and he school is involved in its dissemination.
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Jean-Stéphane Dhersin, mathematician specializing in modeling, urges caution: "It's worth it to conduct this kind of study, but it is very difficult to draw definitive conclusions, because the sample is limited and there are many biases.
The data on transmissions in schools are very fragile.
A study in the United Kingdom indicated, for example, that a child was more contaminating when he was the only one in the home… You have to be careful not to make the numbers say what you want.
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Avoid a "denial of health reality"
On the psychological, social and economic risks linked to the confinement of pupils, Terra Nova joined the Minister of National Education, while warning: "However real they may be, the inconveniences linked to the closure of schools and to teaching in distance should not lead to a denial of the health reality.
"The think tank therefore proposes a series of measures, estimating that" the protocol currently in force in the establishments is not enough, by itself, to carry an effective prevention strategy.
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The first approach consists in "allowing children and adolescents to become actors in the fight against the epidemic", on the model of the fight against tobacco or road prevention.
For example by calling on influencers, comics, games, reminder SMS ...
The second recommendation is better support for adults.
"The goal is not so much that teachers enforce a protocol: it is that they can make the right decisions, in full understanding of what constitutes or not a risk", recommends the author, who suggests in particular to produce "short videos in" Raw "format […]:" why I don't put my mask under my nose "," why it's not mask or distance or ventilation, but: mask and distance and ventilation ", etc. .
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The report concludes with two proposals aimed at increasing the ventilation of rooms, as well as the detection and isolation of sick children.
On the first part, Terra Nova is campaigning for the deployment of CO2 sensors in classrooms, indicators of "the load of aerosols that can carry the coronavirus".
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On the second, the think tank considers the deployment of saliva tests announced last week insufficient and recommends the establishment of a task force dedicated to the "strategy of prevention of the epidemic in the school environment".
He pleads for "mass screening, ideally with rapid tests, systematic and above all repeated frequently", recalling that English teachers are tested twice a week.