Back to school at all costs… but until when?
While the country is in the throes of an epidemic outbreak, the pupils of zone C (Paris, Créteil, Montpellier, Versailles and Toulouse) resume their lessons this Monday, one week after zone A (Besançon, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon, Grenoble, Limoges, Lyon, Poitiers) and one week before zone B (Aix-Marseille, Amiens, Caen, Lille, Nancy-Metz, Nantes, Nice, Orléans-Tours, Reims, Rennes, Rouen, Strasbourg), the 8 March.
In all, 8 million students are back in class.
Not insignificant, while 20 departments have just been placed in "reinforced surveillance", due to the high incidence rate, on the one hand variants greater than 50%, critical hospital pressure and viral circulation. which is soaring.
To break the chains of Covid-19 contamination, the question of closing schools is more than ever raised ... but the government this week draws its lethal weapon to avoid it: saliva tests.
"Massive" screening, or 300,000 tests per week by mid-March, Prime Minister Jean Castex promised Thursday.
This Monday, Jean-Michel Blanquer, the Minister of National Education, attends a screening in a school in Haute-Saône.
VIDEO. How does the saliva test that will be deployed in schools work?
Contacted, the Rue de Grenelle recalls that it is "not relevant" to close schools: "This Monday, the start of the school year will be effective, as well as that of March 8.
Jean-Michel Blanquer has always refused to close schools after the first confinement, for fear of a massive dropout.
Before the holidays, the High Authority for Health (HAS) therefore gave the green light for the deployment of saliva tests for first-degree students, "less intrusive" than the 15.5 cm swabs to stick in the nose which rejected the little ones.
These tests consist of spitting into a tube, then transmitted to the laboratory.
"The first started in zone A in the week of February 22, they are accelerating this Monday and will gain momentum", indicates the National Education.
Which explains why 50,000 tests are planned for the week of re-entry in each zone, without being able to specify how many have already been carried out.
The rate should increase to 80,000 per week, then 300,000 by mid-March.
Too early, however, for a first assessment.
For middle school and high school students, it always happens in the nose
They will be deployed "in risk areas", in particular departments under enhanced surveillance.
No repetition of the operation: it will be a "one-shot" in the establishment detected, specifies the ministry.
On the other hand, an experiment began on a panel of ten schools, colleges and high schools by academy, subjected to screening every two weeks.
At the same time, 300,000 nasopharyngeal tests per week have been deployed in the second degree for several weeks.
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Will this commando operation be sufficient?
It responds in any case, in part, to the wish of many elected officials who wish to "try everything" before deciding on confinement including schools.
Like Stéphane Troussel, president (PS) of the departmental council of Seine-Saint-Denis, who called for “reinforced means” and “more tests” after the placement of his territory in a reinforced surveillance zone.
Alas: more and more doctors point to the school as the last lever to curb the virus.
"In France, there is a dogma to say that nothing is happening in the school environment", plague epidemiologist Dominique Costagliola, who recalls that neighboring countries like England and Germany closed their schools when the epidemic figures have exploded.
Same story with Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health in Geneva (Switzerland).
"Scientific research is evolving, we now know that the virus is transmitted between children, and from child to adult," he recalls.
Between the curfew, local confinements, teleworking, it is almost only children who have social contact.
If the contamination is on the rise, they are part of the explanation.
"
Variants love children
Finally, the recent offensive by the British, South African and Brazilian variants is a game-changer.
They are more contagious, including in children, which studies on the original strain had shown were - a little - spared.
Their management at school has recently changed: if there is no longer any question of automatically closing a class in the event of an English variant - because we could have feared too many school closures, this variant now being the majority -, the closure is systematic in the case of Brazilian or South African.
"Depending on local situations, especially with regard to these variants, school closings may be decided," said the ministry this Sunday.
This is the case in Chambourcy (Yvelines), where schools are keeping doors closed on Monday after the discovery of 12 cases of contamination, including South African and Brazilian variants.