The new school health protocol has just been relaxed. Faced with the surge in Covid cases, this protocol was deemed untenable in the medium term by the executive.
It had just been announced and entered into force immediately after the start of winter holidays on Monday. Finally, the health protocol planned at school by the government and Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer to lessen the wave of the Omicron variant will be relaxed as of January 7. It must be said that since its establishment, parents and teachers have denounced a real headache. The principle was as follows: as soon as a student in a class tested positive, all children had to take three tests in four days to be able to attend face-to-face lessons. The first to be carried out in PCR or antigen test. The next two days, two days and then four days after the declaration of the case, could be self-tests. This will always be the case… Unless, in the meantime, another student is tested positive.
Relief in the event of a new case in the classroom
In its new version, the course of the three tests is abandoned in some cases. Faced with criticism and the difficulty of its implementation, this new health protocol will be lightened. What changes: in the interval between tests launched for the detection of a case of Covid in a class, if another student tests positive, the This does not mean that the screening cycle is restarted and stay valid for seven days for other students. One way of slowing down the mad race for tests a little for the government to stay the course on what it has placed as a priority since the start of the 2020 school year: “ensure pedagogical continuity” by avoiding the closure of schools, even if it had indeed intervened in the meantime.
Over 47,000 positive cases in less than a week
The latest figures from the Ministry of National Education indicate that more than 47,000 students have tested positive since the start of the January, this Monday. As a result, some 9,000 classes, or 2% of their total, were closed yesterday due to cases of covid. However, the health protocol put in place at the start of the school year was already a relief. With the old protocol, any positive case in a class resulted in a shutdown. As of Monday, as long as the student’s tests were negative after a case was detected, he could return to class. Will the relaxation brought on Friday make it possible to disrupt the working conditions of students and teachers less?