Covid-19: should we expect an outbreak of cases with the start of the school year?

Published on : 09/02/2021 – 06:35

It is a new school year that the government wants as “normal” as possible. After two months of vacation, 12 million students in metropolitan France are back on Thursday, September 2, on the school benches. However, with children under 12 unvaccinated and a health protocol deemed insufficient in schools, many scientists are worried about a comeback of Covid-19 in the fall.

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal himself warned on Wednesday against an epidemic “resumption” that could cause “the start of the school year, with the return of many activities”, as well as the “fall cooling”.

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“In this unvaccinated population, the risk of intense circulation of the virus at the start of the school year is very high”, had already alerted the scientific council in a note given to the government on August 20.

“The most probable scenario is indeed that of an increased circulation of the virus, in particular because the Delta variant spreads more easily among young people”, warns the doctor Jérôme Marty, president of the union the French Union for a free medicine, joint by France 24.

According to a model from the Institut Pasteur, children could represent half of the new contaminations in mid-September.

“Extremely disturbing” increase

This fear is all the more justified as in the countries where the re-entry took place a few weeks before France, the number of cases of Covid-19 is exploding.

This is the case in Scotland, where the number of Covid-19 patients has increased fivefold in four weeks and where the positivity rate has risen from 5% to 11.5%, an exponential increase attributed to the resumption of school activities in August.

“Even if we expected to see an increase in the number of cases, the scale of this increase in recent weeks is extremely worrying,” Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon expressed concern on Wednesday in front of Parliament.

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Same trend in Germany where the number of contaminations has soared since the return of schoolchildren to class in several Länder, with 9,162 contaminations recorded on average each day. And this despite a particularly strict health protocol with mandatory wearing of a mask at school and self-tests carried out three times a week from the age of six.

Finally, the example of the United States, where schools in some states have reopened, also shows a resurgence of the epidemic among the youngest.

According to American Academy of Pediatrics, the number of infected children quadrupled between late July and late August, from 38,000 to 180,000 cases. Children now represent 22% of Covid-19 cases identified each week and 3.6% of hospitalizations.

Protect children under 12

If hospitalizations are rare in children affected by the virus, they are increasing rapidly all over the world, remind epidemiologists and health professionals in a column published by the newspaper Le Monde. “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, and the quadruple for the 10-19 age group “, explain the signatories.

“Very few children develop serious forms but if the number of contaminations explodes, the number of young people hospitalized will be less and less trivial, specifies Jérôme Marty. The other risk is to see long Covid developing in children. “

According to a recent British study, one in seven adolescents would be likely to suffer from symptoms related to a long Covid such as chronic fatigue or muscle pain after being infected with the virus.

In France, scientists and parents of students are calling on the government to review its copy to better protect unvaccinated children under 12. Several avenues have been mentioned in recent weeks, such as the purchase of air purifiers, the generalization of CO2 sensors which allow the need for class ventilation to be judged, or even the implementation of a real screening strategy in schools. educational institutions.

For his part, Jean-Michel Blanquer wants to be reassuring despite the concerns surrounding this comeback. “It is not a specific place of contamination” hammered, Wednesday, the Minister of National Education on France Inter. “A child can infect himself more in activities other than school.” The minister takes as proof the case of Reunion Island where less than 0.2% of classes were closed 15 days after the return of the students.

For this start of the school year, level 2 health protocol, on a scale of 4, will apply in schools. In particular, it provides for the wearing of a mask inside the CP in the Terminale, the regular ventilation of the premises or the isolation for 7 days of unvaccinated high school students in the event of contamination in a classroom.