Spain's public health committee has made some changes to Covid measures this Friday. A meeting between representatives of the autonomous communities and the central health ministry has recommended that schoolchildren under the age of 12 should only be quarantined when there are at least 5 positive Covid cases in a single classroom, or for smaller classes, when at least 20% of students are infected. Only in these circumstances will the whole class have to be isolated for seven days. The committee's justification for setting this cut-off measure was to guarantee the continuity of in-person classes, for all but the infected children themselves.
In response, this evening, the Catalan health department has confirmed that it will apply the change of protocol, but is critical of the Spanish committee for taking this decision just three days before the start of the new school term on Monday, a fact that makes it difficult to "properly" inform the public, health professionals and the educational community. The department is already working to adapt protocols for next week. CatSalut will maintain the protocol of testing close contacts of infected students, as it did in the first term, at infant school level and in primary and secondary schools. In the case of primary school students, the same system used with secondary school students will be applied - through pharmacies affiliated to the scheme.
Thus, according to the new recommendations, classes of children up to the age of 12 with just a few cases of Covid will no longer have to go into quarantine and will be classified as "sporadic cases". The group will be able to carry on their classes in the classroom up till the point when a total of five infected children is reached, or 20% of the class. Beyond that, students over the age of 12 will follow the same protocol as for the adult population: those people who have been in close contact and have not been vaccinated will have to isolate (even if they test negative); while those who are close contacts but have been vaccinated will not have to quarantine if they test negative.
This change in the protocol for schools, according to the Spanish ministry, adapts to the current pandemic situation, reflecting the significant progress in vaccination among all age groups, and taking into account "that school environments have proven to be safe environments throughout the pandemic in terms of virus transmission".
Covid in Catalonia
The sixth wave is increasingly straining the Catalan health system. This Friday, 84 new Covid-19 hospital admissions have taken place, to bring the total to 2,002 hospital beds occupied by Covid patients. This is a figure that has not been reached since August 2021, in the middle of the fifth wave. Unlike the situation six months ago, however, this time the hospital pressure is lower in the ICUs. Four more patients have been admitted to intensive care units in Catalonia over the last day, bringing the total to 471. The figure, although considerable, has been sustained over time and has not undergone rapid growth, which is very good news given the huge rise in infections over the last two weeks.