No slippage and in Dad only in individual and necessary cases: Monday 10 January we go back to school, with due care, of course.
This was stated by Patrizio Bianchi, Minister of Education, thus confirming what was said by the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, in the last conference at the end of the year. Further confirmation also from the Undersecretary for Health, Pierpaolo Sileri: for him too “from January 10 there will be a return to school, I don’t see any major problems. The Omicron variant is more benign than Delta, which has resulted in many deaths”.
Regarding the high number of infected people under 18, the minister added: “Before the holiday closure we had a number of positive children under control: 0.5% out of a total of 8 million. May there be increases and possible and we are working on keeping I take this possibility into account, but the school remains the most controlled place, on which we have the utmost attention “. Bianchi then added: “For three weeks our children and young people are out of school, so we invested together with General Figliuolo to improve tracking and be safe on their return”. The school quarantine
Again Sileri, on the new rules for school quarantine, clarified that “as soon as we have more conclusive data on Omicron, the rules on the quarantine of children, pupils and students can also be revised. It could also be between 7-10 days, with the new year, probably before the reopening of the school “. And he added that “we need to see how much this variant of the virus is more or less aggressive. The reduction of the quarantine must be based on precise scientific data, we await the CTS. We must evaluate the data very well”. The new rules of back to school
As established by the decree law of December 24th, students must always return to the desks with “classic” surgical masks. Instead, the Ffp2 or Ffp3 masks will be mandatory, which allow for greater safety inside closed environments, for staff where there are students exempted from using the masks. The latter will be provided by the emergency commissioner. In fact, article 16 establishes that the commissioner provides for the supply of the devices “to the staff in charge of school and teaching activities in the educational services for infants, preschools and schools of all levels, where there are children and pupils exempted from the obligation to use respiratory protection devices “.
The decree also added greater attention to screening,with the allocation of 9 million euros for the control and detection of the virus and its variant Omicron. In fact, schools and classrooms provide a possible place of contagion for the virus, favoring its spread. Article 13 (Urgent provisions to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection in schools) reads as follows: “In order to ensure the identification and tracing of positive cases in schools of all levels for the school year 2021-2022 the Ministry of Defense ensures support to regions and autonomous provinces in carrying out the activities of administering tests for the research of SARS-CoV-2 and related analysis and reporting through the military laboratories of the network of molecular diagnostics located throughout the country.
