PARIS (AP) — Just one week after a third of French schoolchildren went back to school in an easing ofthe coronavirus lockdown, there’s been a worrying flareup of about 70 COVID-19 cases linked to schools.
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Some schools were opened last week and a further 150,000 junior high students went back to the classroom Monday as further restrictions were loosened by the government. The move initially spelled relief: the end of homeschooling for many hundreds of thousands of exhausted French parents, many whom were also working from home.
But French Education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer sounded the alarm Monday, telling French radio RTL that the return has put some children in new danger of contamination. He said the affected schools are being closed immediately. French media reported that seven schools in northern France were closed.
The situation highlights the precarious situation the French government is finding itself in as it seeks both to reassure the public that the country is moving forward past coronavirus and to react prudently to safeguard public health.
Blanquer did not specify if the 70 cases of COVID-19 were among students or teachers.
Given that the incubation period for the virus is several days, people are “likely” to have been infected before the reopening of the schools, he said.
France reopened about 40,000 preschools and primary schools last week, with classes capped at 15 students.
About 30% of children went back to school, Blanquer said. The government has allowed parents to keep children at home.
This week France is reopening junior high schools in “green” regions less affected by the virus, which do not include Paris.
Although the idea of children being silent “super-spreaders” has been largely debunked in recent analyses, last week France recorded its first death of a child linked to Kawasaki disease, a mysterious inflammatory syndrome that some doctors say could be triggered by COVID-19.
The 9-year-old boy in Marseille was one of 125 children in France currently with the syndrome.
French authorities have reported at least 142,411 people infected with the coronavirus and 28,108 deaths.
40,000 * 15= 600,000
70 cases our of 600,000= a little less than 1 in ten thousand who got sick
If they were kids, whats the mortality rate for kids who got covid 1/100,000?
If they were adults whats the motrality rate for healthy adults under 60 who got sick? 1/10,000?
So at minumim the chnace of actually getting it and dying based on the french sample set is (1/10,000 *1/10000). Now I ask you all is that a reason not to open schools? Do we realize that schools are more essential than groceries or minyan? So we realize this is our future at stake? This is what we live for? Have we gone mad and crazy.
Enough of this already.
PS we should still make sure proper mitgation and containment strategies are in place. But we need to reopen now and immediately.
I simply sit in amazement about how cavalierly you and others are willing to let others sacrifice their kids for your edification. Stanford-Binet has yet to come up with a category that befits your ilk.
Given your antipathy towards spending too much time with your own children, perhaps in hindsight you should have not had them. Perhaps going forward you should be more careful.I know you are very machmir with minyan and pirya verivya, but not at the expense of endangering others, and insisting that others take care of your children, when the Din clearly assigns that responsability to you, as you would know if you had kavana as you lain Krias Shema every day. I know the Rebbe in Yeshiva acts as your shliach, but mitzva begufoi is more mehadrin. I know you do not assign a schliach for your mitzva of onoa.
I am a teacher.
There is absolutely no substitute for classroom learning.
I’m doing Zoom and phone, and it’s almost a joke.
Again , there’s this one meshugener commenting under different names hocking day and night and just doesn ‘t want to get the heck out of here.