Bourn COVID-19 Risk Reduction
Updated 20 April 2022
From 1 April 2022, the Government has stated that Covid 19 is now to be managed in a similar way to any other respiratory illness. The link to the full guidance is here. The similarities between Covid 19 and other respiratory viruses means that it will not be possible to distinguish one virus from another based on symptoms alone. Most people can no longer access free testing, so this guidance is now working on the basis that it is not necessary to know if the respiratory illness is Covid or not.
What does this mean in practice?
Children and young people with mild symptoms such as a runny nose, sore throat, or slight cough, who are otherwise well, can continue to attend their education setting.
However, if your child is unwell and has a high temperature, they should stay at home and avoid contact with other people, where they can. They can come back to school when they no longer have a high temperature and they are well enough to attend. The government states that the risk of becoming severely unwell from Covid and other respiratory infections is very low for most children.
If your child has taken a Covid test and it is positive, (although these are not recommended for children under 18 unless directed by a health professional) they should try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for 3 days after the day they took the test, if they can. After 3 days, if they feel well and do not have a high temperature, the risk of passing the infection on to others is much lower. This is because children and young people tend to be infectious to other people for less time than adults.
If an adult has taken a Covid test and is positive, they are asked to try and stay at home and avoid contact with other people for 5 days after they took the test, but this is no longer a legal requirement.
What will we do in school?
If your child has symptoms of a respiratory illness or a temperature, please keep them off school as you would do normally.
You are no longer required to test your child for Covid..
- If you do test and they are positive, then we ask that they stay at home for 3 days until they are well.
- If we are notified of a positive test result, we will inform parents of that class, for information. You do not need to take any action.
- We will ask adults who test positive to remain off work for 5 days.
- We continue to ventilate classrooms and use CO2 monitors to monitor air quality
- We continue to have an enhanced cleaning programme, involving cleaning of classroom tables, toilets and high touch areas at lunchtime
- We continue to remind children to wash/sanitise their hands and follow good respiratory hygiene.
- Adults and children who are known to be positive for Covid will be asked not to attend the school building until they are no longer deemed to be infectious.
- Staff and visitors may wear face coverings at their own discretion, but this is no longer required.
- We may continue to ringfence a class internally if there are higher than normal numbers of children absent with respiratory disease symptoms (whether conformed as Covid or not).
- Whilst Covid is not seen to be a severe illness in many children, it remains highly infectious and we wish to reduce the number of children absent from school wherever possible.
- Our Outbreak Management Plan is still operational and measures may be implemented if necessary.COVID-19 Risk Assessment 2020 - 2021
In response to the removal of Covid-19 restrictions in July and August 2021, schools are now required to produce a Covid-19 Outbreak Management Plan, which identifies steps that may be taken in the event of an outbreak of Covid-19. These steps are outlined in the document below.
Steps will be taken in response to an outbreak and in response to advice from Public Health.
