COVID Mitigations & Masks Stay to Help Reduce Risk of 3rd Wave Spread
On Friday 11th June Governors, Headmaster and SLT reviewed the most recent Public Health England data release, and it's sub-report into COVID Variants. These releases made it clear that a third wave of COVID has commenced, it also confirmed that the number of cases is rising fastest in the 10-29 age groups; that the Delta [Indian] variant is more transmissible than the Alpha [Kent] variant and that both are more transmissable than the original COVID strain.
With 4 weeks of the term left Governors, The Headmaster and the SLT are not prepared to drop KEVIGS' guard and contribute to, or increase the risk of returning to 10 day isolations and the disruption to education that this would casue. With all students back on site, and the finishing line in sight, we are determined to retain continuity of education for all students for as long as possible.
Furthermore, the school is concerned about any impact to the health of any students, their parents and their families. Whilst it is clear that COVID doesn't pose a lethal threat to secondary age students, one year on scientists now know that the very same students can, and do transmit COVID asymptomatically into the community. Governors were therefore concerned to read that both hospital and ICU admissions in the PHE report included adults who had received both single and full vaccinations. Although it was noted that hospital stays are now likely to be shorter.
King Edward's will therefore retain facemasks; temperature checks; anti-viral fogging; sanitisers; veri-clean coatings on all contact points; social distancing and one-way systems for the next four weeks until the end of term.
The Government advice on facemasks can be found by following the link below:
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