In France, the Omicron variant continues to surge. On January 1, nearly 220,000 cases were detected in the country, a level still very high. And children are the most affected since, as recalled The Parisian, between December 23 and 29 the incidence rate per 100,000 inhabitants was 738 for 0-9 year olds and 1,469 for 10-19 year olds. Figures which force the Minister of National Education to unveil a new health protocol in place as of Monday, January 3.
In The Parisian, Sunday, Jean-Michel Blanquer unveils the measures to prevent classes from closing. And the main one is the multiplication of tests: “From this Monday, we are strengthening our contact-tracing policy,” he explains. In fact, as soon as a positive case is detected, all the students in the class will have to do an antigen test or PCR “before a return on presentation of a negative result”. Jean-Michel Blanquer adds that a family will receive two free self-tests once the first has been carried out. So three tests in four days.
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January “tense”
The multiplication of these tests should “make it possible to ensure that a student who was negative on the first day has not become positive later”, adds the minister, to leave the school open as long as impossible and in the best conditions sanitary facilities. As for colleges and high schools, Jean-Michel Blanquer wants to be more reassuring since the vaccination rate exceeds 80%. “Test more to avoid closing the classes”, such seems to be the leitmotif of the government. Jean-Michel Blanquer once again swept aside the postponement of one week of the start of the school year. “Their closure can only be a last resort and certainly not the first option”, he says in The Parisian.
Finally, in the case of teachers, the Minister of National Education foresees a “tense” month of January, but as the rules relating to the isolation of contact cases are changing from tomorrow, there should be no blocking. It will also be necessary to reduce interactions as much as possible, asks the minister, by issuing a new appeal to mayors to deploy CO2 sensors in all schools, which remain “an instrument for measuring the need for ventilation”.
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