By Tracy Cabrera
A BRITISH epidemiologist at Edinburgh University claims it’s ‘extremely difficult’ to find examples of pupil-to-teacher infection, saying it is “incredibly rare” and schoolchildren “are minimally involved in the epidemiology of the novel coronavirus.”
This came amid calls from teachers in the United States, their unions and others to shut down schools amid the coronavirus pandemic which has seen global Covid-19 cases rise to more than 15 million worldwide.
To support his claim, epidemiologist Mark Woolhouse said that until now, scientists around the world are struggling to find even a few cases of student-to-teacher coronavirus infections after eight months of the pandemic.
Woolhouse was recently made an officer of the British Empire for his contributions to the study of infectious diseases.
“There is increasing evidence that they rarely transmit,” he disclosed.
“For example, it is extremely difficult to find any instance anywhere in the world a single example of a child transmitting to a teacher in school. There may have been one in Australia but it is incredibly rare,” he added.
Numerous countries including Canada, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom have reopened schools with little evidence that much coronavirus transmission is taking place in there.
“Most governments in Europe now recognize that stopping children playing outside was not needed and most governments will probably now say that going to school as normal is safe,” Woolhouse told The Times.
In conclusion, he argued that the information could be used in the future.
