AT LEAST 100 children have been diagnosed with Covid-19 in Ireland in the last two weeks, an expert has confirmed.
Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) Epidemiological Modeling Advisory Group, revealed the figure on RTÉ's This Week programme yesterday.
Professor Nolan said the diagnoses are "in the context of household outbreaks", and relates to 100 children between the ages of five and 14.
Acknowledging the news could be concerning to parents whose children are expected to go back to school next week, Professor Nolan said he could offer "a great deal of assurance" that children would not contract the virus at school and pass it on to vulnerable people at home.
There is 'little evidence' internationally that schools are a major site of transmission, Professor Nolan said.
Children are contracting the disease, but it is usually contracted at home from an infected family member rather than at school, he added.
100 children in Ireland have been diagnosed with Covid-19 in the past two weeks, health expert Professor Philip Nolan has confirmed."If, for instance, there are two children in the same school with Covid in two months' time, it is much more likely that those two kids have separately got it within their own households, rather than transmitting from child to child within the school," Prof Nolan explained on the programme.
Using Germany as an example, where children have been back to school for two weeks now, he said that the outbreaks confirmed in those schools mostly stemmed from clusters in private home settings.
He acknowledged, however, that "we will see cases in students and cases in teachers and clusters in schools", but it will be unlikely that these clusters will have been picked up through being at school.
Last week, Professor Nolan addressed parents' and the public's concerns regarding children going back to school during a spike in cases and with new restrictions being implemented across the country.
In an informative Twitter thread, the health expert stated that if schools reopen but the adult population restricts their movement and contacts, the opportunity for the virus to be passed on could be reduced by more than 60%.
"If we also reduce the risk that our close contacts might lead to transmission (physical distancing, hand/respiratory hygiene face coverings where appropriate) even if these measures only reduce the risk by half then we have reduced the risk of transmission by about 80%," he continued.
"Simply put, if older adults starve the virus of opportunities to transmit (limiting our contacts and being careful) the young can have the higher numbers of contacts that classroom education requires; the sum total of all contacts for the population level remains low."
You can read the explanation in full by clicking on the Tweet below.
If we can only have 6 people in our houses, how can we have 30 children in a classroom? It’s a reasonable question. But it’s not a contradiction; in fact, these measures are connected and coherent. The following explanation is a simplification, but illustrates the principle. 1/8 pic.twitter.com/tSrWVyjodf
— Professor Philip Nolan (@PhilipNolan_SFI) August 21, 2020
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