The government’s deputy chief medical officer has said it would be “very difficult” to ensure social distancing could be maintained with young pupils were schools to reopen. 

Speaking at the Downing Street press briefing today, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said ensuring that young primary-age pupils are kept apart if schools reopened would be “really tricky”.

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“I think that would be very difficult with a classroom of four-year-olds and five-year-olds; I think that would be really tricky. I think we have to think through all of those measures and how that might work,” he said.

He said that relaxing lockdown measures was “a matter of detailed daily deliberating and study. And clearly, as part of that, relaxing schools is in the mix”.

“[As to] precisely how one would do that, I’m not going to comment further because I think there are multiple permutations that you can think of and we have to work through those carefully, one-by-one, scientifically, and get the best and the most optimised answer we can,” he said.

He said he did not want to comment “prematurely” on when and how schools might be reopened, and that when they did, it would be done “carefully, painstakingly, and as and when we can with safety”.

Professor Van-Tam said he had two sons at home and “I know exactly how difficult it is for them, wanting to go to school, and the stress and strain that this is placing on people.”

“But I’m absolutely clear that it was the right thing to do, to close schools when we did, and equally, we now have to be very careful indeed about how we relax social distancing measures and when we do it. And clearly there are multiple combinations of how one might think about that.”

“I’m not going to go into those in detail because the scientific thinking is not yet complete or settled on those.”