FAQ

Anyone who has tested positive with Covid-19 should isolate for ten days. Anyone in their household should isolate for at least 14 days. You must tell NHS contact tracers that your child, or children, attend an education or childcare setting.

Your school may do several things, including but not limited to:

• Working to ensure that children and staff do not attend school, or get sent home, if they have Covid-19 symptoms - and get tested.
• Regular handwashing
• ‘Respiratory hygiene’ such as covering your mouth when coughing or sneezing and employing the ‘Catch it. Bin it. Kill it.’ tissue method, followed by handwashing
• Frequent cleaning
• Reduced contact and mixing including:
  • One-way systems
  • Markings on the floor
  • Bubbles
  • Staggered start and finish times, and more

In early August the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), an authority on the health of children and young people, summarised the key current evidence regarding Covid-19 in children and young people.

Highlighted sections of the RCPCH work can be found below but we recommend that you read the full report here:

• There have been far fewer cases of Covid-19 in children than adults - children consistently make up one to five per cent of total case numbers.
• Covid-19 infection appears to be milder in children than in adults - with children presenting milder symptoms or no symptoms at all. Infants and children typically appear to make full recoveries.
• Very few (around one per cent) of those infected develop life-threatening symptoms and deaths are extremely rare (around 0.01 per cent) similar to seasonal flu.
• Emerging evidence from several countries suggests children may be less likely to acquire the disease.
• There is some evidence that transmission by children is limited, with trends emerging to support this claim - but further research is required - studies in multiple countries, including China, of infected families have concluded that the illness was not introduced by children and a study in France found one infected child did not pass on Covid-19, despite being exposed to over 100 people. Similar studies in Ireland, Singapore and the Netherlands have found no secondary transmission from children in education settings.

Covid-19 infections in Tower Hamlets are now low, so the chances of your child catching it at school are also low. Schools are taking lots of steps to stop the virus spreading in addition to the NHS Test and Trace service which aims to find infections and stop them spreading through communities.

Since March, there have been no cases of Covid-19 in Tower Hamlets education settings. From June onwards, with wider reopening, there have been a total of two cases - introduced from the same household - with no onward transmission.

All the research suggests children may be less likely to catch Covid-19. There have been very few examples of children passing Covid-19 on in schools across the world. 

Washing children’s hands when they leave school and arrive home can reduce risk further.

In late March, Covid-19 infections were increasing faster than anticipated. The government then announced that schools should close to slow the spread of the virus.