Härma: COVID-19 'does not want' to spread from child to child
Acting director of the Health Board Mari-Anne Härma said COVID-19 does not spread often from child to child in a school environment and there are not too many recorded cases of the infectious virus spreading from teacher to student either.
Although recent outbreaks in Estonia have been caused by young people, mainly in the 20-29 age group, an outbreak among school children is close to impossible according to current knowledge because COVID-19 "does not 'want' to spread from child to child", Mari-Anne Härma said at a press conference on Wednesday.
She added that the virus does not spread often from child to adult either. "If we look at the school period, we know that there are few cases of spread in a school environment, where the virus has spread from child to child or from child to teacher."
The Ministry of Education and Research will still exercise caution and guidelines will be distributed to schools by August 25. The ministry justified the late sending of the guidelines by saying they want the most up-to-date data to be used in the development process.
The guidelines will also contain guidelines for the darkest scenarios of coronavirus spread but the ministry believes nation-wide distance learning is hughly unlikely.
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Editor: Kristjan Kallaste
