A scientist who belongs to the government’s SAGE group of advisers has warned that it is “nowhere near” safe to reopen schools more widely.
His comments follow reports that the prime minister has told ministers to “ramp up” preparations to reopen schools after being informed that the UK has passed the peak of the current wave of Covid-19.
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But speaking on the BBC Radio 4‘s Today programme, Professor Calum Semple, who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), said infection levels were currently far too high for schools to reopen.
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Asked if there was a daily infection rate that would make it safe for schools to open, Professor Semple said: “I think we need to be looking at the numbers closer to where we [were] at the end of the summer, when we really had suppressed the virus significantly, and we’re nowhere near that yet.
“The shape of the epidemic curve...my feeling is that to take the foot off the brake would allow numbers to rise again.
“And with the new Kent strain circulating, that’s so highly transmissible that I think taking the foot off the brake at the moment will lead to a further rise in cases.”
Professor Semple added: “We’ve always felt that schools should be the last thing to close and the first thing to open, and we are still seeing good evidence that children are not the primary driver of this outbreak and they are suffering dreadfully from lack of educational opportunity and socialisation.”
He said that reopening schools more widely during a lockdown would also risk higher transmission rates being associated with schools.
“The challenge here is that if you do open schools and everything else stays closed, clearly we will get some increased transmission associated with the school as a whole and with the teenagers,” he said.
“And that will add to the problems of the so-called R number [Covid reproduction number], so we really do need to get transmission down a lot further, much further, because we’re still actually at very high levels of transmission within the community. It would be great if we can do it in a few weeks’ time, but I personally don’t think we’re there yet.”
