Covid cases among England’s schoolchildren hit record peak
Covid-19 cases among schoolchildren in England have surged to a record high, raising the spectre of further educational disruption and a fresh wave of infections in older groups.
New cases among 5 to 14-years-olds increased by 80 per cent week-on-week to 811 per 100,000 in the period ending September 19, eclipsing their previous peak recorded in late July.
The steep jump in Covid infections among children has been followed by an uptick in cases affecting people aged 30 to 49 — their parents’ generation — which now stand at 286 per 100,000, having grown by 7 per cent in the past four days.
Cases among people aged 30 to 49 have gone up despite social mixing within this group remaining flat, at roughly three close contacts a day, according to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s CoMix study, suggesting that the rise is due to transmission between children and parents.
“If [the epidemic] keeps increasing like this all the way to half term, we’re in trouble,” said Prof John Edmunds, lead author of the study and a member of the government’s Sage committee of official scientific advisers. The eventual return of workers to the office could “worsen the situation” he added.
“This is where we have to start thinking about plan B,” said Edmunds. “These spillover effects from one age group to the next unfold over the space of several weeks, so we’d expect to see an uptick in even older groups soon.”
“There’s very high levels of immunity in older age groups, so that will help, but the vaccines are not perfect,” he added.
Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, said on Wednesday that around half of all children had already contracted coronavirus, but there was still the possibility of more turmoil in schools over the months ahead.
“We’re running into winter so there’s still quite a lot of damage that could be done in terms of disruption,” Whitty told the education select committee, adding that the majority of unvaccinated school-aged children aged between 12 and 15 would likely contract coronavirus “at some point”.
Case rates among young adults aged 16-29 in England are currently falling. For the 50 or above category they are also declining or flat.
Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London and a member of the Independent Sage group of scientific experts, said she feared that the wave of infections could reach vulnerable groups before the national vaccine booster campaign gathered pace.
“The danger now is that we have a lot of vulnerable people who are waiting for their booster and are more than six months out from their second dose,” said Pagel.
“The worry is not just that children will infect their parents, but they will eventually infect their grandparents.”
But Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, said people in England could be “encouraged” by how a swell of infections among young people in Scotland starting in mid-August “only partially filtered through” into older groups, and has since began to fall across all ages.
“We want to see infections and hospital admissions firmly coming down, but we may get there soon,” added Woolhouse. However, he cautioned that “over the last couple months the epidemiology [in England and Scotland] has been more dissimilar than any other phase throughout the pandemic.”
There are also promising signs from Leicester, where schools returned a week earlier than other council areas in England. Case rates among school-age children soared to 979 per 100,000 by September 13, but the surge appears to have peaked, with the rate dropping to 927 per 100,000 three days later.
Speaking to the Royal Society of Medicine, Prof Ivan Browne, public health director for Leicester, confirmed cases among young teenagers appeared to be “at a bit of tipping point” after “really sharp spikes” but he warned against complacency.
“Leicester more than most, we’ve been through a few different waves where we’ve had a few false dawns . . . so it’s encouraging but I’m not fully convinced that will be the end of the story,” said Browne.
Alasdair Munro, a clinical research fellow in paediatric infectious diseases at the University of Southampton, told the FT: “The fallout from not interrupting children’s education in terms of spillover cases [was] predictable and not overly concerning.”
“There is always a trade-off that we see with flu and now we’re seeing the same thing with Covid,’‘ said Munro. “We know that allowing children to mix without mitigations leads to some serious illness in elderly people, but we accept that provided it doesn’t get out of control.”
Data published by the Department for Education on Tuesday showed more than 100,000 pupils were off school with a confirmed or likely case of coronavirus last week, up from 82,000 in the week before term ended for the summer holiday.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The Sage modelling group warned of the high likelihood of an exponential increase in Covid infections among school-age children . . . and this does appear to be what we are now seeing.”
Weekly hospital admissions in England stand at 4,424 in the week to September 19, having fallen by 17 per cent in the past week.
However, Woolhouse warned that the arrival of winter was likely to present further challenges for the UK as a whole.
“There are several things that are going to happen in the winter,” he said. “Universities will be back in full swing, people will spend more time indoors and contacts could yet return to pre-pandemic levels.”
Additional reporting by Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe