17:10

Should schools in Britain shut? Interestingly, although other countries such as Italy and Ireland are doing that, there appears to be no groundswell of medical or scientific opinion in the UK that it should follow suit.

There are slightly mixed opinions among experts surveyed by the Science Media Centre (https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/), but no one urging immediate closures like those seen elsewhere.

“Not closing schools seems understandable to me”, said Dr Jennifer Rohn, a cell biologist at University College London. “Children will be the least likely to be affected and therefore the least likely to be shedding virus, which is directly proportional to more serious symptoms. In contrast, if you close schools you’re keeping a very large number of parents away from work. As long as it is deemed feasible to keep workplaces open, it’s probably better not to harm the economy further in this way.”

Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, is more sceptical. “I would like to see a bit more about why they’re not closing schools and banning large events. We do know, in general, that school holidays lead to a marked reduction of transmission in infections and at the end of school holidays, infection rates take off. Every mother and father knows that when kids go back to school they’re going to get hammered by colds and flus and sore throats.”

He would like to know more about how ministers and government advisers reached their decision. “I’m sure it’s based on good quality science. But we don’t know what that science is. The science isn’t being shared with us in a way that makes it easy for us to understand the logical basis for all of this. I would hope that more of the information and science that the government is relying on to make these decisions would be made available so we could interrogate it and see if it’s valid.”

Dr Charlotte Jackson, from the UCL Institute of Clinical Trials and Methodology, points out that school closures have proven effective against outbreaks in the past.

“There are examples from the UK and elsewhere of school closures reducing transmission of influenza. During the 2009 flu pandemic, the UK saw a reduction in cases following the closure of schools for the summer holiday, and an increase when schools reopened in the autumn. There are also studies from various other settings, including France, Hong Kong and Mexico, suggesting reductions in transmission of seasonal or pandemic influenza associated with school closures. Social distancing measures in general did seem to slow down transmission in US cities during the 1918 flu pandemic”, she says.

However, that does not mean that they would help delay the spread of the Coronavirus, she adds. “With the current coronavirus outbreak, countries have generally used lots of control measures at the same time (this also happened during the 1918 flu pandemic) so it’s difficult to separate any effects of school closures from other interventions. I wouldn’t like to comment definitively on whether closures would be effective for this particular virus.”

What about Boris Johnson’s new policy of advising schools against overseas trips? Deenan Pillay, professor of virology at UCL, says: “Banning overseas school trips is a difficult one, but remember that any trips involve groups of people going to airports, going on boats and coaches and living together, and since this virus is ubiquitous now, anything like that is likely to increase acquisition of the virus. We know that children are less likely to get severe disease from coronavirus, but they nevertheless are likely, if they do get infection, to spread to others. It’s a sensible measure before closing the schools”.



(With thanks to the Science Media Centre).

