Coronavirus UK: Infection rates do NOT increase in school age children

Cases of coronavirus do not get out of hand in schools, Professor Chris Whitty insisted tonight.

England’s Chief Medical Officer said rates are not going up for school-age children – under 16. And at tonight’s No. 10 press conference, he claimed the trend was true “ across the country. ”

But he cautioned that this was not the case for 17- to 21-year-olds, where outbreaks are getting bigger ‘quite quickly’.

The figures come after unions and scientists warned that the return of schools would trigger an explosion in cases that, while children don’t seem to get sick from Covid-19, could have endangered the health of staff and parents.

Professor Whitty justified his claims about schools in a clear graph and presented official data on test positivity rates for five different age groups.

Test positivity shows how many people think they have Covid-19 actually do so and is a measure that can be used to detect infections without affecting the total number of cases, which can fluctuate unreliably as more or fewer tests are performed .

Professor Whitty’s data he pointed to showed test positivity rates rose to about 12.9 percent among 19- to 21-year-olds, doubling from 6 percent at the beginning of the month. But he did not explain why.

Thousands of students flocked back to campus earlier this month, with a handful of universities, including Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester Metropolitan, forcing their students into lockdown due to outbreaks.

Footage has surfaced in recent days of booze-fueled raves across the country in student housing, with partygoers ignoring social aloof guidelines and the rule of six.

The data presented at tonight’s press conference – where Boris Johnson warned of a second lockdown unless the outbreak subsides – also showed that the test positivity rate has risen to about 9.6 percent in 17- and 18-year-olds.

In comparison, it had remained fairly stable at less than 7.5 percent in the first two weeks of September.

But among the five to ten year olds (1.5 percent), 11 to 14 year olds (2.2 percent) and 15 and 16 year olds (3.8 percent), rates have hardly changed.

Professor Whitty said, ‘It is important to distinguish between different age ranges between younger people, children and young adults …

‘In these groups [ages 5-10, 11-14 and 15-16] the rates are actually not changing much at the moment. These are mainly school-aged children.

While in older children and young adults – those 17 to 21 years old – and the same for other young adults, rates are rising quite quickly …

“This is important to remember when people are concerned about schooling – school-age children are one of the areas where rates are not increasing and this is true across the country.”

Separate data from Public Health England – based on slightly older figures – showed that the percentage of young children returning a positive test result has actually fallen slightly since four weeks ago.

While the positivity rate for children has remained stable, it has increased in some other groups and is now higher than 15 percent for men between the ages of 50 and 79 and more than 13 percent for women in their 60s.

This shows that many more elderly people who are thought to have coronavirus actually do so, while only about one in 50 children who get tested because they have symptoms actually have the disease.

But data from Public Health England clearly shows that schools have been responsible for a spike in coronavirus outbreaks since early September.

And data shows that 41.7 percent of all recorded Covid-19 outbreaks in England during the week ending September 20 – 222 out of a total of 532 – were in “educational settings.”

Its share doubled in a week, after only 21.6 percent of all registered coronavirus clusters came from schools and universities (110 out of 510).

In comparison, educational institutions – which were closed during the summer – were responsible for only 0.6 percent of the 157 outbreaks in the first week of August.