Covid: Over one million children out of school due to virus

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The findings were released as students left the school gates on the last day of term and coincided with a new high in the number of people self-isolating. In the last week of the school year, more than one million students were kept outside of classrooms, up from 839,700 the previous week.

The study found an overwhelming majority of students who were forced to self-isolate did not go on to test positive with Covid.

In fact, 98.4 percent of schoolchildren who were sent home for ten days did not go on to contract the virus.

The study added that there were four percent fewer coronavirus cases in schools that prioritised daily testing instead.

Recent figures reveal almost one in four schoolchildren were off school.

The figure rises to almost a third amongst those currently at secondary school.

Nottingham University’s Jonathan Ball said the study demonstrated that the “unnecessary disruption” could have been avoided through testing.

Professor Ball told The Telegraph: “It is always going to be tricky to define the relative effectiveness of isolation versus testing, as there are a lot of assumptions that need to be made. That aside, what this study shows is that daily testing rather than isolation of contacts is effective in preventing onward transmission.”

Tim Peto, an Oxford professor of medicine and the principal investigator in the schools trial, claimed the findings could help end the pingdemic.

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A record number of people in England and Wales now find themselves pinged by the NHS Test and Trace app to self-isolate.

The Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think tank in Westminster, estimates 6.2million people in England and Wales have been asked to isolate since May.

Professor Peto told The Guardian: “This will give comfort to people who want to work out a better and easier way to stop transmission than pingdemics and these rather destructive ways of controlling disease.”

The schools trial saw over 200 schools participate in a study carried out between April and June.

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Approximately half of the schools continued to follow regular Covid-guidelines and the other half introduced frequent testing rather than mandating self-isolation.

Oxford claimed schools who had introduced mass testing over the trial period felt “bereft” when forced to revert back to the current system.

The Government has promised to scrap rules that require bubbles to isolate in the upcoming school year.

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