Decision-making on school reopening should be decentralised: Paediatrics body

It also recommended that the decision regarding keeping the schools open should be reviewed every 15 days

The Task Force on School Reopening 2021 constituted by the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) recommended that the school reopening decision should be taken at the level of districts (or taluk/city/village/school) according to the local situations, rather than at the national or state level.

IAP set up the task force to review and update its earlier recommendations in the current context and scientific evidence. The number of new cases per lakh population per day in a taluk should be less than 20 for the preceding two weeks, the IAP recommended. It also recommends that the decision regarding keeping the schools open should be reviewed every 15 days. Schools and governments should facilitate students' return to school by arranging transport as before, and not impose restrictions such as RT-PCR tests of students, it said.

Paediatrician Dr G V Basavaraj from Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, who was part of the 12-member team of experts from across the country, told DH that vaccination of the adult population (with at least one dose) in a district should be 60 per cent or more before considering school reopening.

He said he submitted a copy of the report to the state Covid-19 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) on Friday.

Also Read | Panel to decide on restarting Karnataka schools for classes 1 to 5

DH spoke to all the 30 district health officials, including BBMP. Data revealed that Ballari district has only 58 per cent of its population covered with the first dose of the Covid vaccine.

"If the first dose coverage is less than 60 per cent, then it is a concern. Since, in Ballari, it is off by two percent it should be safe to open schools. Also, if a taluk with 10 lakh population, for example, has 200 cases, it means cases are on the rise where we do not recommend opening schools. All districts in the state have a test positivity rate less than 5 per cent, so reopening is recommended," Dr Basavaraj said.

BBMP had vaccinated 80.71 per cent of 92 lakh people residing in the civic body's limits with at least one dose till September 10. The first dose coverage in Dakshina Kannada district that is currently battling cross border infections from Kerala was 76 per cent.

Kolar had 69 per cent first dose coverage, Bengaluru Urban (104 per cent), Dharwad (66.19 per cent), Chitradurga (62 per cent), Bidar (63.4 per cent), Koppal (65 per cent), Udupi (83.4 per cent), Ramanagara (78 per cent), Tumakuru (67 per cent), Vijayapura (60.12 per cent), Kodagu (84 per cent) and Haveri (67.24 per cent). The other districts did not respond to DH's queries.

The IAP advisory on school reopening notes: "Children have been homebound for more than 17 months now. Consequently, they are displaying significant physical and psychosocial health issues. The educational void is increasing... However, the horrific experiences during the second wave were traumatic and act as a big barrier to any attempts to bring children back to school."

Other IAP recommendations

— High-risk staff members (those with diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, chronic lung or kidney diseases) should have completed two doses of vaccination 15 days before attending schools

— High-risk children (those with asthma, kidney diseases, disabilities, those on steroids) should consult their paediatricians before joining schools

— The current scientific research suggests that seroprevalence is an unreliable indicator with high false positivity and should not direct policy decisions on social restrictions

— This unreliability is due to factors like restricted population surveys, non--representative samples, uncertainty around test accuracy, and limited knowledge about antibodies in the long term

— To understand the disease epidemiology, the survey results need to be interpreted in the context of other external information, such as confirmed cases, deaths, and infectious disease models

— Hence, IAP does not recommend the seropositivity of the population as an epidemiological indicator for school reopening

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