The return to school will be in strict compliance with the sanitary protocols.
About ten million students return to face-to-face classes in Spain this Monday after the Christmas holidays, at the height of the most contagious wave of coronavirus, with 86.8% of adolescents fully vaccinated and 32.1% of children from between 5 and 11 years with at least one dose.
The Government and the regions agreed that the classes continue to be totally face-to-face, as before the Christmas period, since Spanish educational centers are “safe”, apart from the fact that the epidemic breaks infection records day after day.
The rapid expansion of the highly contagious omicron virus variant, and the successive festive celebrations, which ended last Thursday, favor massive contagion, the effects of which will be noticed for several days in health statistics, according to the authorities.
Therefore, the return to school will be with strict compliance with health protocols, although with the recommendation to soften quarantines.
Classes will begin, however, with part of the teachers on leave for being infected or in quarantine after having been closely related to infected.
One of the novelties is that the masks will also have to be used in the exterior parts of the educational centers, not only in the interior as up to now, an obligation that will be maintained as long as the current situation of high transmission continues.
Before the beginning of the classes, many regions have updated their protocols, with small news regarding the beginning of the course, last September. They insist on recommending that students take their temperatures at home before going to class, limiting access to school facilities for non-teaching staff, and highlighting the importance of cross-ventilation of classrooms.
Fully vaccinated students who are in close contact with a positive will be exempt from going through quarantine, if they are asymptomatic, and those who are not, must respect a period of seven days, when before it was ten.
Last Friday, a public health technical commission recommended quarantine for all students in the same classroom as long as there are at least 5 cases of covid-19 or at least 20% of the students are affected, in a period equal to or less than 7 days.
Uncontrolled contagion
At the moment, the epidemic incidence registers data never seen in Spain, an average of 2,722 cases per one hundred thousand inhabitants in 14 days, according to the last update notified by the Ministry of Health, two days ago.
And the positives are 33.16% of the diagnostic tests, when the WHO places the control threshold at 5%.
On the contrary, fatality remains at 1.3%, one of the signs that support the effectiveness of vaccines, according to health authorities, since it was 4% a few days after the outbreak of the epidemic in Spain, in March 2020.
More than 80% of the population of Spain is already fully vaccinated, and those over 40 years of age also receive a booster dose, starting with the oldest. (I)
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