Covid-19: what to remember from the adaptations of the health protocol at school

And three! In less than a week, the government has decided once again to relax the health protocol in schools. It must be said that since the start of the school year, Monday January 4, parents have been faced with a real headache to have their children tested.

Faced with the risk of paralysis of the school system, Jean Castex announced this Monday evening on France 2 three simplification devices:

• First, when a positive case is detected in a class, parents will be able to wait for the school outing to pick up their child (until now, they had to be picked up immediately). This measure will come into force between Tuesday and Friday depending on the schools, Matignon told LCI.

• Then, if your child has a contact case, “Today, he has to do three tests. A PCR or antigen in the pharmacy, then two self-tests on D+2 and D+4. I asked that we be able to use three self-tests”, said the Prime Minister. This will be effective from Tuesday. The three self-tests will be free, thanks to a certificate issued by the school.

• Finally, there will no longer be a need for parents to produce a certificate for each negative test. “We are going to ask for a certificate once and for all, to simplify the lives of parents and teachers”, added Jean Castex. This provision will be put in place at the end of the week to let schools prepare.

Jean Castex also specified that 11 million self-tests will be delivered to pharmacies this week, indicating that they would not be directly allocated to schools: “If I put them in schools, I risk putting a lot of them in schools that don’t need them and not enough in those that need them”, he said.

Despite the galloping spread of the Covid epidemic in schools, the government has only one objective: to leave establishments open as much as possible. “10,453 classes were closed this Monday, or 2% of classes in France”, announced the Chief Executive. “If we closed a class at the first case, given the explosion of Omicron, in a few days, all the schools in France and Navarre would be closed”, he continued.

However, will these new measures be enough to answer all the questions of parents and teachers? Nothing is less certain… The reactions of the teachers’ unions were very cool: Guislaine David, general secretary of Snuipp-FSU, the first primary union, denounced a “total disregard for the teachers who are in the field”, considering that it was wrong “not at all to reduce the number of contaminations at school, on the contrary (…) because now all that is required is a certificate on the honor of the parents”. Compared to “the way we protect staff and students, he did not provide any answer”, abounded Sophie Vénétitay, of Snes-FSU (1st in the second degree). For Stéphane Crochet, from SE-Unsa, “this new rule will only add tension on the pitch, where the situation is already

very tense”. Seven primary and secondary unions called for a strike on Thursday 13 January.