Sheffield’s schools are not seeing mass outbreaks of Covid cases, says education chief
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As of last week, there were a total of 359 confirmed cases in schools and bubbles were asked to isolate in 84 primary schools, 26 secondary schools and three special schools.
No school has had to close completely.
Coun Abtisam Mohamed, Cabinet member for education, said it was difficult to give details of how many pupils and staff were quarantined.
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Hide Ad“At any one time we are unable to give a definitive figure of the numbers of schools with confirmed Covid cases as there is no single source of information that gives a complete picture.
“Information is held across each individual school, the local authority, Department for Education and Public Health England.
“There is no single monitoring system and the figure is changing on a daily basis. Schools will report confirmed cases of Covid to a number of different places, not just Sheffield Council.
“We can confirm we are seeing single cases among pupils and staff in schools rather than outbreaks.
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Hide Ad“This reflects the fact that the majority of virus transmission is in the community and relates to households.”
Coun Mohamed said if someone was to test positive, the school would then carry out health and safety measures with support from public health to work out the best course of action.
“Every school and case is different and so advice to schools is provided on an individual basis. This depends on how many contacts that a person with Covid has as well as the duration of contact.”
She said it wouldn not be appropriate for the council to name the schools with coronavirus cases.
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Hide Ad“The Department of Public Health has strongly recommended against publicly naming institutions where there are outbreaks. There are a number of reasons for this including medical confidentiality and identifying individuals.
“We are all bound by data protection and the law and to my mind, there is no operational advantage to naming institutions.”