On this it does not rain: «The masks must be worn to school, to the counter and outside, because the Delta variant spreads with great efficiency. It is showing greater contagiousness in children than the previous variants ». For Stefania Salmaso, epidemiologist of the Italian Association of Epidemiology and former director of the National Health Surveillance and Promotion Center of the Higher Institute of Health, the time has not yet come to discover mouth and nose in the classroom. Even France, which proposes to remove the mask at school, specifies that it will not be before November and only in the case of limited traffic.
Everything else, speaking of school in Italy, seems to have fewer fixed points. Shall we start from the quarantine?
«There are 7 days for the vaccinated and 10 for the unvaccinated from the last exposure, with a swab at the end of the isolation period. If, on the other hand, the tampon was foreseen earlier, several days of distance learning could be avoided. The American Centers for Disease Control, the CDCs, propose a swab 3-4 days after exposure to check if the infection has occurred “.
Even the interpretation of “close contact” is not always univocal. How should it be understood?
«We are talking about a distance of less than two meters indoors, even for less than 15 minutes. With the Delta the rules have been made more stringent ».
Sometimes the contact is thought to be the classmate, sometimes the whole class. How to regulate?
«It seemed to me that the desk mate did not exist, since the desks are single. It is difficult to understand who is in close contact if we are inside a classroom. We have learned that the virus spreads through aerosols more than we imagined, and aerosol moves unpredictably indoors. When we speak of “bubbles”, we generally refer to classes. The pupils stay together inside them, but without coming into contact with different classes. I also think that it would be important to combine distancing measures with greater information for young people ».
In what sense?
“It would not be bad if someone explained to young people how the infection occurs, what are the situations in which there is a risk and how vaccines work, not only for the coronavirus. We did it in the days of AIDS. Today we could repeat it, with the help of videos and graphics that are much more effective than then ».
Do salivary tests in some sentinel schools work? In several cases, the do-it-yourself samples were illegible for the machines.
«The sampling must follow precise rules. For example, it is necessary to fast for an hour before the swab, otherwise breakfast is instead of the virus ».
There is a lot of talk about tampons also to give the Green Pass to the unvaccinated. But why didn’t the tampons take off at school?
“I don’t know, if done right they could help a lot. However, they should be performed periodically, not once. Checkerboard swabs can be made, each time testing a fraction of the children in the class and analyzing multiple samples together to simplify the procedure. There is no shortage of technical solutions ».
Why does the US have such a high flare-up in schools?
“Masks are not always provided. Vaccination coverage is on average lower than ours and is patchy. Some states have too low coverage to stem infections ».
However, you have repeatedly explained to us that tampons have a margin of error. Aren’t we giving them too much responsibility?
“There can be mistakes, we’ve always known that. In the case of false positives (the swab is positive, but the virus is not actually there), unnecessary quarantines can be triggered in schools. For example, it can happen if a boy plays sports, is tested before a competition and turns out to be a false positive. You risk sending the whole class home before a second test reveals the error ».
The knots are not lacking, but how are the curves among the boys today?
“Good for the moment. School did not start long, but infections remain decreasing among the very young, even in non-vaccinated age groups ».
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