Covid Update - 24th January 2022

Covid Update - 24th January 2022

There have been some changes to Covid legislation reported in the news last week and over the weekend and I wanted to provide you with an update based on the school's own risk assessment. 

Unfortunately, we are seeing the highest number of positive cases of Covid in our school community since the pandemic began, and the rates are continuing to rise day on day. 

On returning to school on the 5th January 2022, we were notified of 10 of our children testing positive for Covid and unable to attend school on that day. The number of children reported to us as testing positive for Covid has risen quite dramatically over the last 2 weeks to our highest total of  69 children being unable to attend school on Friday 21st January 2022, due to testing positive for Covid. 

In order to protect our school community, we are going to be continuing with the measures in our risk assessment for several weeks, to keep our children and community safe. We will be continuing with our enhanced cleaning, wearing of face masks on the school site (including parents and carers at the start and end of the school day), room ventilation, hand sanitisation etc.

Classes are continuing to work as bubbles (wherever possible) rather than coming together as a collection of year groups, whilst also ensuring that we can safely open and function as a school. 

This weekend I received a letter from Rupert Suckling, as Director of Public Health, clarifying the new national and local guidance for testing and isolation. Please see the key aspects of this guidance below and note the changes to the self-isolation guidance: 

Symptomatic Cases: Any pupil or staff member with new Covid-19 symptoms should arrange PCR testing and not attend the school site.

Asymptomatic Cases: Anyone who DOES NOT have any symptoms of Covid-19 but tests positive on an LFD test does not need to get a follow-up PCR test. They must register their LFD test on the Government website and self-isolate immediately.

Self-Isolation Advice:

Self-isolation advice for people who have tested positive for Covid-19 has changed.

It is now possible to end self-isolation after 5 days, following 2 negative LFD tests taken 24 hours apart. Those who have 2 consecutive negative tests on day 5 and 6 can return to work or school as long as they do not have a temperature.

If LFD tests are still positive on day 10, we are advising locally that the person should continue to isolate and take a daily LFD test, if a negative test is received on days 11, 12, 13 or 14, the person can return to school. If your LFD test is still positive on day 14, you can stop isolating the following day. This will be reviewed as we understand how likely people are to remain infectious beyond 10 days.

Thank you for all your support to keep our children, staff, parents/careers and wider community safe - we are very proud of #TEAMWARMSWORTH!