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SCHOOLS closing for the summer break is likely to be one of the reasons why coronavirus cases across Britain are temporarily falling, a leading expert said today.
Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (Spi-M) advising ministers, said that he was cautiously optimistic about dropping cases, but only time would tell whether the third Covid-19 wave was abating.
The University of Warwick infectious diseases expert told BBC radio: “There has been a change recently and I think the big one is that, in a lot of parts of the country, schools have now closed for the summer.
“Secondary-school children have been doing lateral flow tests twice a week for quite a long period of time and we know at the moment cases are slightly higher in younger people.
“Because schools have now broken up, it may be that part of the reason cases have dropped somewhat is that we’re not detecting as many cases in younger people now.”
He added that it always took a couple of weeks for case numbers in the community to be reflected in hospital admissions.
“We need to monitor this over the next few days to see if this is consistently going down or whether we are sort of seeing a dip because schools are closed and then maybe things might level off again,” Dr Tildesley said.
Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Geoff Barton said that schools were hit very hard by Covid-related absences during the final week of the summer term.
He told the Star: “We simply cannot endure similar levels of disruption to education during the next academic year, and schools and colleges will need to prepare for another set of challenges when students return in September.
“They need substantial financial and practical support for on-site asymptomatic testing for students, high-quality air ventilation systems and robust outbreak-management plans.
“The government needs to provide a proper injection of support and funding to allow them to prepare.”
A spokesman for No 10 said that the fall in coronavirus cases was “encouraging,” but that numbers were still expected to rise.
