“Faced with a highly contagious Delta variant that circulates intensely in children and adolescents, firm action is expected” – Le Monde

Tribune. Two weeks before the start of the school year, faced with a highly contagious Delta variant that circulates intensely in children and adolescents, firm action is expected to protect their health in schools.

The Delta variant is currently spreading at high speed among younger people. In the UK it has mainly spread from children: over a million pupils have been absent in the last month of school. In the United States, 121,000 cases of children and adolescents were reported last week alone.

In France, in the Landes, on the eve of the holidays, the incidence rate in schools already far exceeded that of adults, even among 3-5 year olds. This summer, the clusters have multiplied alarmingly in day centers and summer camps. On August 2, the incidence rate among 0-9 year olds was already very high, exceeding the threshold of 200 per 100,000 in three regions, while their positivity rate was double that of the general population.

Closing of classes in the first case

The hospitalization rate for 0-19 year olds is increasing in countries where the Delta variant is predominant. In the United States, up to 1.9% of children who test positive are hospitalized in some states. In Georgia, 7 out of 100,000 children are currently in hospital for Covid-19. In France, during the past year, 1.2% of 0-9 year olds who tested positive were hospitalized and the number of hospitalizations is now double that of last year at the same date, that 10-19 year olds, the quadruple.

Covid-19 can also cause complications in the medium term. According to scientific literature and UK government data, between 2% and 8% of infected children have persistent symptoms. In addition, long-term sequelae or complications of the disease, which may still be unknown, cannot be ruled out. Finally, if deaths remain very rare, they do exist and are all tragedies whose number could increase with greater viral circulation.

Alerts are multiplying all over the world. In the United States, Canada, India, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain… pediatricians and learned societies are calling for greater protection for children under 12. It is our turn today to sound the alarm bells.

Effective contamination prevention measures must be adopted from the start of the school year. The protocol published on July 28 defines an operating framework for schools with four levels of measures : it is necessary, without further delay, to define their territorial level of application, the epidemiological indicators, as well as the thresholds triggering the passage from one level to another.

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