Public health experts have warned of the risk of closing down schools too late, as New York City becomes the latest city to shut its doors to students.
Raina MacIntyre, professor of global biosecurity at the University of NSW, told Crikey school closures only worked if they were done proactively, as part of a broader lockdown.
“You can’t leave it too late to when the health system is falling down. You need to do it as a proactive measure, shutting down as much as possible,” she said.
Professor MacIntyre said while it was not too late for Australia to start closing schools, the countries that had been most successful at containing the virus had done so early.
“Basically countries that have taken drastic social distancing measures early on have contained the epidemic,” she said.
Laureate professor Nick Talley at the University of Newcastle told Crikey Australia ran the risk of falling behind the curve if it didn’t start to act on closures soon.
“I don’t think we’ve left it too late already but I think we should be doing it now,” he said.
“We’re on a curve that is exponential, and we need to act as quickly as possible.”
While new social distancing measures have been announced for schools in New South Wales, such as cancelling school excursions, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said on Sunday it was “too early” to close schools.
“There is no question we have a range of social distancing measures that we will not hesitate to recommend to government, but they’ve got to be proportional and they might last for a long time,” he told ABC’s Insiders.
“So you don’t want to move too early.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday that there was no requirement for schools to close yet.
“People are naturally anxious about the issue of schools,” he said.
“As the British chief medical officer observed over the last couple of days, the issue of widescale closure of schools, it may be anti-intuitive, but the advice is this could be a very negative thing in terms of impacting on how these [disease] curves operate.”
Professor MacIntyre said the herd immunity approach currently being considered in the UK, which involves shielding at-risk groups like the elderly and sick and then letting COVID-19 sweep through everybody else, was “completely wrong, half-baked and dangerous advice”.
“That would just result in a bigger epidemic, a bigger peak and a massive surge,” she said.
“It is wrong, and the purpose of social distancing is to delay it, to reduce the impact, to flatten the curve, until we have a vaccine.”
Talley said schools may only have to close in certain cities, and could be closed over a number of days to ready parents in the workforce.
“We shouldn’t cause panic. But on the other hand if we wait for evidence that we haven’t flattened the curve it becomes too late very quickly,” he said.
“If we have a huge outbreak, and the evidence suggests we probably will, the economy will shut down anyway.”
New York City will largely shut down its public school system this week, the first US city to do so. Schools have been shut down as part of sweeping lockdowns across Europe, the new epicentre of the virus. Spain and France have followed Italy in introducing strict lockdown measures, and Belgium and Switzerland have also made closures.
“Europe is the absolute epicentre now,” MacIntyre said. “It is catastrophic in Europe. Cases are surging in France, Spain, Germany.”
Ontario and Alberta have stopped classes at all educational institutions. In Canada’s other provinces school boards, colleges, and universities are stopping classes individually.
I am a teacher. I drove to work listening to the radio, they were doing their normal studio interviews over the phone to reduce exposure. I then go to my workplace. I will be in close extended (10 minutes plus) contact with over 150 people today. As well as this there will be fleeting but close contact with a couple of hundred more. Then shared surfaces, door handles, chairs, light switches etc. etc. Two degrees of seperation? Out into 5 figures. If / when I get it, I will be fine. I can’t say this for the grandparents / sick relatives & friends of the people I’m in contact with. It will be disruptive to close the school system. It will be dangerous / fatal not to do so.
Agreed. Why are teachers and their families being asked to be the sacrificial lambs? The Dept of Ed is just trying to stall and procrastinate so they can get as close to the school holidays as they can before closures. They really are horrid and reprehensible people.
There won’t be a vaccine for COVID-19 for at least 18 months, optimistically (it takes at least 8 months to produce and roll out the seasonal influenza vaccine, and that’s routine).
If the pandemic won’t end till a vaccine is available, then the economic consequences will be dire and long lasting. Not a recession, more a depression.
School closures have mostly been tried, and modelled, in influenza. Influenza infects the young, and children are a major vector for its spread in the community. Since COVID doesn’t seem to infect the young, its not very clear to me why closing schools should work at all.
It does affect the young.
Close the schools. Deal with the doctors childrens’ childcare separately.
UKs herd immunity plan has me aghast when there is no vaccine yet. Recipe for widespread deaths.
I can’t believe the illogical responses from those in power. The numbers of cases and deaths are approaching exponential. With the knowledge that the virus is communicable before symptoms appear, the logician in me suggests humans should isolate until there is a vaccine, if only to save the limited medical resources available to deal with the humans who have it.
Most illogical, Captain.
It’s not only the doctors’ childcare, it’s the nurses’, the cleaners’, the catering staffs, as well as the supermarket workers’, etc etc. Society would grind to a halt, hospitals included.
Society in Italy has ground to a halt. We are on the same vector. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time and cases before we too realise that a total shutdown, not just schools, is required.