New Delhi: The Indian Council of Medical Research suggests that schools should provide onsite Covid-19 testing facilities after reopening, as per existing country-specific guidelines. In a peer-reviewed paper in medical journal published by the ICMR Director General, Dr Balram Bhargava, Head of epidemiology and infectious diseases, Samiran Panda & Tanu Anand, authors noted that the testing strategies in school settings could serve as key interventions to check the potential spread of the virus.
‘Routine temperature or symptom checking in schools should be avoided, due to limited evidence on their utility. It is also recommended that schools should have access to onsite testing facilities as per existing country-specific guidelines. It must also be acknowledged that the testing strategies for SARS-CoV-2 infection in schools should act as adjunct and not substitute to other organizational and behavioural interventions,’ the paper said.
The paper explains the necessity of reopening schools, also highlighting the need to have younger children back in school. It has thrown light on strategies going wrong or requiring modification in India, regarding the opening of schools. ‘Reopening of schools with younger children was unlikely to push the reproductive number (R) above one while reopening secondary schools resulted in more number of cases as older students had their respective family members infected as well, while another school setting in Ireland did not report any secondary transmission’, the paper stated.
The paper pointed out that evidences indicates that restoration of functioning of the education system as it was in pre-COVID times, as early as possible appears prudent in the current Indian context. It also noted that younger children are less susceptible to severe Covid-19 infections, saying ‘the risk of severe disease and mortality in children when compared to adults is much less’.
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The paper also explains that the digital divide was widening and that there were major learning losses being reported, citing the studies done by UNESCO and few other surveys. According to the report, while students and parents ‘missed out on social interactions’, ‘lacked physical activity’ and ‘had a sense of losing bonds with friends due to prolonged school closures’ during the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers believed that the pandemic had caused irreparable damage.
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