Coronavirus Hospital districts knock out government quarantine policy for schools – ‘It must be accepted that someone may get infected from a school’

Could you the quarantine policy the government wants to succeed in schools? According to hospital districts, no.

On Friday, the Minister of Family and Basic Services Krista Kiuru (sd) said the state of mind wasthat the entire school class may be quarantined if there is a single case of infection in the class.

“It is not possible to quarantine the categories,” says the chief physician of the Oulu University Hospital, the infectious disease doctor and the doctor in charge of infectious diseases in the hospital district. Teija Puhto.

“Practically, one should call the parent of each child so that the placement can be done. At the moment, a person who has a positive test result will receive a call, and that too will drag on for ten days. If we had to call 30 others, even the common sense says that the idea is pretty absurd. ”

This would result in ongoing quarantine of children.

“And the infection authorities wouldn’t have much time to do anything else. Doctors and nurses would already be needed elsewhere, ”says Puhto.

“The entire tracking system is a huge resource drain that doesn’t produce health.”

Read more: All of this is recommended by the government’s corona group

Bridge At present, in a large part of Finland, entire school classes are not quarantined.

Even before Christmas, many municipalities announced that in the future, infection tracing will be prioritized so that no tracing calls are made to those exposed in school classes at all.

On Monday, the city of Helsinki further said end most corona quarantine and infection tracing. The same is done in 11 other municipalities in Uusimaa.

Read more: Helsinki will end most of the corona quarantine and infection tracing

Helsinki the doctor in charge of infectious diseases in the city Sanna Isosomppi points out that quarantine decisions are administrative decisions concerning an individual which are taken under the official responsibility of an infectious disease doctor.

“They are not political decisions.”

In Helsinki, the epidemic has already spread so that it cannot be prevented by quarantining the asymptomatic. You can be exposed to the virus anywhere.

“In Helsinki, I see no reason to quarantine. A sick child should stay home. It’s the A and O of everything. That’s the message right now. ”

If someone at home suffers from a disease caused by the coronavirus, the asymptomatic child can still go to school, but avoiding extra contact and following hygiene measures, Isosomppi advises.

Read more: The government’s corona fist focused on matters under the decision-making power of the regions, experts estimate – Husin Järvinen: Continuous testing is rather inefficient and wields for schoolchildren

Same says Northern Ostrobothnia.

“In big cities, tracking is already dragging on so that quarantine is useless. Quarantined children would only be a continuation of the queue. ”

Since according to the law, quarantines are decided by a doctor in charge of infectious diseases, for example, the principal cannot be asked for help.

Doctor responsible for infectious diseases in the city of Turku Jutta Peltoniemi commented to the BTI that there should be national guidance on a possible mandatory quarantine order.

In the last two weeks, the hospital districts in Northern Ostrobothnia and Pirkanmaa have had the next highest number of infections after the hospital districts in Helsinki and Uusimaa (Hus). Although access to the test has not yet been delayed in Northern Ostrobothnia, according to Puhto, it is only a matter of a week or two.

In Pirkanmaa entire school classes have not been quarantined “for a very long time”, says the chief physician of the infection unit Jaana Syrjänen From Tampere University Hospital.

Already last spring, quarantines of schools have been considered more individually, he said.

“We do not believe that we will have any change in this practice at this stage,” says Syrjänen.

In Pirkanmaa, infection surveillance is congested as elsewhere. According to Syrjänni, unvaccinated family members are now being quarantined. Isolation decisions are made for those who need such a benefit for infectious disease, for example.

“In such an epidemic, tracing and quarantine operations have already lost their importance in epidemic management,” says Syrjänen.

Minister Kiuru’s wish would not be possible in Pirkanmaa either, says Syrjänen. In practice, it would require that tracers be hired for some additional “huge amount”.

Syrjänen also does not consider school quarantines useful.

Face masks are widely used in schools, and a large proportion of those over 12 are vaccinated. In addition, students see each other in their free time and are often infected by adults.

“If we want children and young people to go to school, we have to accept that someone might get infected from school.”

Northern Ostrobothnia According to Teija Puhto, instead of quarantining children, resources should be put into basic health care, among other things. As the number of people in hospital due to the coronavirus has doubled in the last two weeks, Puhto says the focus should be on treating them.

“However, hospitals are burdened by adults, not children. The risk of serious illness for children is low. ”

Pirkjmaan Syrjänen also points out that school quarantines “do not solve our hospital workload”.

Schools The low profile of the epidemic in the population has been discussed by, among others, the Professor of Zoonotic Virology. Olli Vapalahti From the University of Helsinki.

Huslab has analyzed, among other things, the spread of the infection group in the two metropolitan schools at school and from school to home. The clusters involved 80 cases of corona.

“It is noteworthy that neither of the two large-scale school epidemics led to any of the infection chains detected by sequencing in society outside the clusters,” Vapalahti told HS in an email.