– From a purely medical perspective, this is probably not a good idea – says Dr. Maciej Pawłowski, MD, a pediatrician who specializes in family medicine, about returning the youngest classes to full-time teaching. “Too few people are vaccinated so far and the virus can spread,” he adds.
- On January 18, after a long Christmas break and a two-week winter break, the youngest students returned to school. Is it safe?
- Low outside temperatures do not allow frequent airing of rooms or taking part in outdoor activities – comments the pediatrician, Maciej Pawłowski, MD, Ph.D.
- As the doctor explains, children will usually suffer from coronavirus with little symptoms, but they can infect adults, and their course will be more severe
- – A good solution would be vaccinating the adult population and more extensive testing of people from the environment of children in grades 1-3 – adds the expert
- Will infections increase again after children return to full-time education?
- More information on the coronavirus can be found on the TvoiLokony home page
Karolina Świdrak, MedTvoiLokony: The youngest primary school classes returned to full-time education after the winter break. How do you, from the doctor’s perspective, view this decision?
Maciej Pawłowski, MD, PhD: There is probably no clear answer to this question. There are pros and cons. From a purely medical perspective, I don’t think that’s a good idea – too few people are vaccinated so far and the virus can spread. Low outside temperatures also prevent frequent airing of rooms or taking part in outdoor activities.
What does going back to school mean for the children themselves – how will it affect their physical and mental health?
It depends on the situation in the environment of a particular child, but in general contact with peers or teachers and sports activities should have a positive impact on mental and physical health.
- During the Spanish epidemic, the children returned to school. How did it end?
How realistic is the scenario where children “spread” the virus and infect teachers, parents, grandparents with it?
Unfortunately it is possible. Children will generally be poorly affected by the coronavirus, but adults may be infected where the course is more severe. A good solution would be to vaccinate the adult population and to test more extensively from those around children in grades 1-3.
“The risk of fueling a pandemic is not that great”, said the Minister of Health, Adam Niedzielski a few days ago, announcing his return to full-time education. What do you think about these words? Is the minister right?
No, I don’t think he’s right. What data is it based on? How can you estimate how many infections will be exactly in a few, a dozen or several dozen days? It is very difficult, if not impossible. It is enough for someone to have symptoms, and not to see a doctor or consult, but not perform the test (because he may only have a runny nose and sore throat) and if it was a coronavirus, it would not be included in the statistics. This is just speculation, I would not like to use the word “experiment”.
However, I am aware that apart from the medical aspects, there are also economic, social and technical aspects, so the minister’s decision probably also takes into account these circumstances, hence the decision to return some children to school.
What about vaccinations? Unvaccinated teachers return to schools. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until they had the vaccinations?
This is what I wanted to point out earlier. Vaccinating teachers and the elderly would put their children at lower risk of being infected with the coronavirus.
Why – in your opinion – is the vaccination program in Poland going so slowly and why we are getting worse and worse compared to other European countries?
As for the number of purchased and delivered vaccines, I am not going to say anything because it is not a medical issue, but a financial one. However, it has been known for a long time that there is a shortage of health care personnel in Poland – nurses, doctors, paramedics, etc. They will not come in one day. If there are problems with filling the shifts, there will also be problems with filling the vaccination points. These are years of neglect that are redoubled during a pandemic.
Do you share the views of many medical professionals who believe that we are on the verge of a third wave of a pandemic? Will going back to school affect this situation?
I rarely use the word “wave”. There are many infections, officially several thousand or several thousand a day for several months with an increase to over 20 thousand. We do not know exactly how many there were before testing was introduced to the POZ, allowing orders after teleportation. And so now the statistics will certainly “escape” some cases, and by autumn there could have been more of them than the official data indicate, because outpatient testing was limited. Mass social contacts, including school ones, in a confined space will cause an increase in infections, but how big and when exactly – in my opinion, it is impossible to clearly estimate.
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