From Europe to the US, cases of COVID-19 in children increase.Schools are not prepared

(CNN)-While Covid-19 cases shot in Britain at the end of December, Stuart Guest spent their vacation thoroughly studying scientific reports on air cleaning and filtration systems.

Guest, director of a primary school of Birmingham (England), looked at Amazon air purifiers affordable with the hope of preventing the most transmissible omicron variant, to extend among their 460 students, who are between 3 and 11 years old.

The British government recommends two models manufactured by Dyson and Camfil, but at 424 pounds (US $ 575) and 1,170 pounds (US $ 1,590), respectively, were too expensive.Guest ended up buying 200 pound portable units (US $ 270) for each classroom.

"I have what I think is the best air purifier for the budget I have. I hope I have achieved something that fulfills its function, but I am not an expert. And the Ministry of Education has not given any guidance. I had to do it everything I, and should not have to do it when it comes to a national crisis, "Guest said.

Millions of British students returned to school after Christmas and New Year holidays, in the midst of a record increase in infections and hospitalizations.For teachers and parents, the situation raises a gloomy sensation of Déjà Vu.Unlike last January, when the Alpha variant swept the United Kingdom with a new confinement, Prime Minister Boris Johnson decided to "cope with" the omicron wave with limited restrictions and maintain open schools, alleging the ravages that education toDistance has caused the mental health and learning of students.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged in a televised speech that the National Health Service of the United Kingdom was in "warfoot", but said it would not introduce more restrictions.

But the main professors unions claim that the government did not do enough to maintain security in the classroom, and demand, in an unusual joint letter, financial support for air purification units, COVID-19 tests in the facilities and personnelsubstitute teacher.

In the face of the new period, the Department of Education announced the need to test twice a week and the temporal use of masks for high school and high school students, but not for primary schools.The department said it would provide 7,000 air cleaning units for teaching spaces in which it is impossible to apply fast solutions, such as the opening of windows, approximately one in three schools in England.To replace the lack of personnel, the United Kingdom Minister of Education also suggested combining the classes and asked the retired professors to show their "spirit of Blitz" to return to the classrooms.

"It is unfortunately inappropriate," Guest said about government measures."They continue to say that education is their number one priority. It is clear that it is not at all."Last Wednesday, five members of her staff, including three of her 15 professors, were sick or isolated - the greatest amount of absences at the Guest school since the beginning of the pandemic - and she said that he feared thatfollow more.

As the omicron ravages around the world, the rampant infrastructure that kept schools in operation during the past year is in danger.The variant, which caused a record increase in pediatric infections in the United Kingdom, parts of Europe and the United States, threatens to endanger the unstable balance that allowed schools to remain openly open last year, although with closuresSelective classrooms.It also shows how little it has been done in some places to protect students, since teachers turn to open the windows when it is very cold and frequently check the carbon dioxide monitors while teaching their classes.

In the United States, there are more children than ever admitted to hospitals.The Biden government said schools are "more than equipped" to remain open, while the country sweeps the country.But some elected officials are sinning cautious by delaying the new period, while a teacher union forced to close the Chicago public schools (Illinois) amid the criticisms of its members, which consider that the conditions in the classrooms are dangerous.

A Chicago primary school is empty.The city's school district canceled classes in the midst of negotiations with the Teachers' Union, which claims distance teaching and the improvement of COVID-19 security measures.

Although outbreaks can occur in schools, studies carried out in the United Kingdom, Australia, USA and Italy have shown that propagation among children in the school environment is usually lower - or at least similar - to transmission levelsIn the community, when mitigation strategies such as masks are applied.But experts are waiting to see if the omicron variant can change that calculation and cause an explosion of cases in the classroom.

Although children are less likely than adults to develop a serious illness because of COVID-19, they can also seriously ill or die, or they can develop complications such as potentially deadly multisystemic inflammatory syndrome and long covid.Until one in seven children and young people can present symptoms of COVID-19 up to 15 weeks after the disease, according to a study by the Great Ormond Street hospital in the UCL, in downtown London.According to the United Kingdom National Statistics Office (ONS), 117,000 children in this country currently live with long -term COVID.

Omicron seems to cause a more slight disease than the previous variants, but the first investigations also suggest that this variant can trigger more problems in the upper respiratory tract, which can be more dangerous for young children, being able to cause Crup and bronchiolitis.

Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of Vaccine Development of Texas Children's Hospital, declared Jake Tapper last week, that the increase in hospitalizations for the COVID-19 in the largest Pediatric Hospital in the USA.

"We did a terrible job vaccinating our children throughout the country (...). So, although there is much talk about the omicron variant, a less serious illness, when all the factors are added (...) we have a situationVery serious in this country, especially for children. "

About 17% of American children between 5 and 11 are fully vaccinated;The vast majority of hospitalized children in the United States are not vaccinated, according to the director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky.

The safer mitigation measures in the classrooms

After two years of pandemic, public health experts made it clear what mitigation measures would make the classrooms safer: vaccination, classroom masks, periodic tests, contact track tracking, bubble systems, isolation and improvement of ventilation.The regional director of the World Health Organization (WHO) for Europe, Dr. Hans Klug, said in early December that masks and ventilation, combined with tests, should be a norm in all primary schools and thatChildren's vaccination should be considered nationally.

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A health worker manages the COVID-19 vaccine to a child in Lisbon.Portugal, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, began applying vaccines to children from 5 to 11 years at the end of December.

Many countries in the European Union began vaccinating children from 5 to 11 years in mid -December, but the United Kingdom did not begin to vaccinate clinically vulnerable children until recently.This bothered some parents, and British news reported that at least one mother led to the EU to vaccinate her daughter.

Christina Pagel, director of the Operational Clinical Research Unit of the University College of London, said that the decision to delay vaccines for British children was a mistake that would expose them to another period of illness, and put parents and school staffat greater risk.At the beginning of the new course, one in 10 children (from 2 to 11 years old) had COVID-19 in England, compared to one in 15 adults, according to ONS data.

"We are going to see a great increase in children. And it will be very, very disturbing," Pagel said."His teachers will understand, and probably in one or two months, his parents will understand. We will see a high level of prolonged infection."

Pagel, a member of Independent Sage, a group of expert scientific advisors not affiliated with the government, said that the British government is an atypical case in terms of their attitude towards infections in children and has not used mitigation strategies deployed withsuccess in other places, mainly ventilation and masks.

In an opinion article for the British Medical Journal, he highlighted the successes of countries such as Norway and Japan, which maintained open schools thanks to preventive measures, such as spaceing the desks of the classrooms, using exterior spaces as far as possible,Avoid agglomerations and use rigorous handwashing practices.Pagel also pointed out that some parts of the US and Europe, such as France, Spain, Italy and Germany, managed to impose the use of masks for primary, secondary and high school children, with increases in cases when the rules were relaxed.

A girl wears winter clothes and a mask in her ventilated classroom of the Petri de Dortmund Elementary School, in western Germany, at the end of November.

A recent study in Germany discovered that demanding from children and adults the use of masks in schools could significantly reduce the transmissions and outbreaks of COVID-19, since the outbreaks used to be more serious when the source was an adult.Studies published by the US CDCs have also demonstrated the effectiveness of masks to limit the transmission of COVID-19 in educational environments.A study discovered that the schools of two of Arizona's most populated counties who did not demand the use of masks had 3.5 times more likely to suffer a Covid-19 outbreak than schools that demanded that all people, regardless of theirvaccination status will carry a mask inside.CDC recommend the universal use of masks in all schools.

But even in countries like France, where masks and other palliative measures are mandatory in schools, it is feared that omicron will overflow in the classrooms.An analysis carried out in December on the protocols in the French schools, which used the data of the wave of spring infections in the country, discovered that periodic tests and vaccination against COVID-19 were the most effective ways to minimize closures.It also suggests that the circulation of the virus among children in schools is much greater than in the community in general, which represents a greater risk of infection for students' family members.

Vittoria Colizza, Epidemiologist of the INSerm, the French Public Health Research Center, based in Paris, and one of the authors of the study, said that, in the light of an omicron and the threat of even more contagious variants, the situation in the situation inSchools were going to be more difficult in the coming months.Therefore, Colizza and other scientists have been pressing for periodic tests and empties children, which began in France last month."I think that much of the problem has been this biased narrative that transmission in schools does not happen, but of course it happens," she said.

While students return to school in an omicron, many scientists and public health experts wonder: if keeping open schools is so important for children, why are we sparing measures that could protect them?

A COVID-19 test center in Albigny-Sur-Saone, in the center of France.French schools have difficulties in the midst of an omicron wave, and the new rules of tests and tracking for classrooms are aggravating the already long lines.

"It is quite scary to see the number of children who infect and hospitalize every week. And the fact that they now go to schools with a highly transmissible variant almost without mitigating and with the vast majority without vaccinating," said Dr. Decepti Gurdasani, clinical epidemiologist at the Queen Mary University of London, on the situation in England."The rhetoric continues to keep the schools open at all costs ... instead of the true debate we should maintain, which is how to keep the schools open safely."

"I am not even sure that many parents realize the type of risks facing children every day. And there are countries that have done much better than us," he added, pointing out the successes in Southeast Asia and EuropeWestern, especially in the reduction of aerial transmission.

Asia's example

The same strategies that led to the southeast and east of Asia to be so successful in the suppression of the virus (generalized use of masks, improvement of ventilation, exhaustive detection and tracking programs of contacts, and support for isolation) also allowed them to limitThe interruption of education, said Gurdasani, pointing out public health measures in Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.They also remain dynamic, changing protection measures depending on cases, and quickly moving to hybrid learning.

In Europe, the German government invested 500 million euros (US $ 427 million) in October 2020 in the improvement of public buildings ventilation systems, including schools, with the update of air conditioning systems and purifiers, what was described by the then Foreign Minister Angela Merkel as "one of the cheapest and most effective forms" to contain the spread of the virus.

And in the United States, New York City distributed two air purifiers for each classroom after extensive ventilation surveys, which helped maintain its positivity rate around 1%, lower than the rate of the entire city of 3%, in December, although that figure was shot from then on 31% in the middle of the omicron wave.

But in England, despite the recommendations of advisory groups and scientists to improve ventilation in schools, the government repeatedly said there were no funds to do so.British liberal democrats recently suggested that England could install air filters in all classrooms for 140 million pounds (US $ 190 million), approximately half of the cost of the new real yacht.

Gurdasani, who is immunosuppressed, was eager to send his 6 -year -old daughter to school this week.She said she had been trying to get HEPA filtration devices in her classroom before a charity organization agreed to finance them.Her daughter, who has asthma, wore a N95 mask the first day, but she was the only one in her class who wore a facial protector.

"She is a shy girl, and nobody in her school has masks, nobody at all. And, you know, she feels very out of place, and as a 6 -year -old girl, that's very hard. But I don't know what else to do."