About a month and a half after the end of the school year, the government pressed by parents, who want to know if their children will return to the classrooms, continues to make a silent scene.
If, as you say, sometimes you have to read between the lines that is to guess what is not said, it is unlikely that children who currently take the lessons online can return to the classrooms before the summer. This is what experts such as Dr. Anna Banerji, an infectious disease specialist, who was interviewed by CTV, said: in the most affected areas such as Ontario, the study is likely to remain virtual until the end of the school year. “The situation is different from region to region but I think in hotspots, where infection rates are high, schools will not reopen. At this time there has been a considerable spread of Covid-19 in Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan – said Banerji – Ontario has stabilized, indeed the cases are also falling but only a few days ago we were inundated with infections, there is still concern that the health system may not withstand a possible load of infections”.
Dr. Banerji’s more than doubt is half a certainty. “It has been said for a long time that children do not contract the virus – she said – now we know instead that the boys really get infected. Most children have very mild illnesses or very mild symptoms, but we had over 1,000 children in the hospital, 145 children in intensive care and 11 dead. So you have to keep all this in mind.”
With a precarious situation with regard to the spread of infections, what needs to be done at this point is to prepare for September. “I think we need to put emphasis on trying to get children back to school safely by the fall, and I think that means that for that to happen we need to start planning now,” the infectious disease specialist said.
If the goal is for students to be ready for in-presence learning by autumn, one tool to ensure safety is to start vaccinating children during the summer. Pfizer’s vaccine has been approved for people aged 12 and over and studies are also underway with younger children.” We have the opportunity to plan during the summer so we don’t have openings and closures in schools once they reopen again,” Banerji said.
Although schools are thought to be largely safe when there is not much widespread in the community, schools have been at the center of some outbreaks during the pandemic. “It goes from community to school and from schools to the community,” said the doctor, “teachers are more at risk than children so it is hoped that they will be vaccinated by the autumn. In addition, if we start vaccinating children during the summer, when schools open in the fall they can be used to distribute the rest of the first doses or administer the second doses of vaccines”.
What needs to be avoided, according to Banerji, is the high-level opening and closing of schools that has occurred so far. “I think the hardest thing for many families is the opening and closing, reopening and closing again, the uncertainty of what’s going to happen,” he said. In practice, the start of the new school year must be planned now so that schools, once opened in September, do not have to close before June.
