If you’ve ever heard teenagers chattering away and laughing during the breaks, or seen them crowd into a supermarket; if you’ve ever experienced the chaotic running and roughhousing of schoolchildren at recess – you might be surprised that things have gone so comparatively well at schools during the coronavirus pandemic.
As recently as the end of October, the science journal Nature published a data survey that came to an apparently reassuring conclusion: “Data gathered worldwide are increasingly suggesting that schools are not hot spots for coronavirus infections,” and further, that schools could “reopen safely when community transmission is low.”
That, though, has since changed.
Such “community transmission” has become quite high in many parts of Germany and the effect of the current “lockdown light” has been disappointingly minimal. Case numbers have stagnated at a high level, while in some regions they have continued climbing at an alarming rate. What are the reasons? Where are people contracting the infections? Is transmission only occurring in shops, which have remained open this fall in contrast to the spring lockdown? Or is transmission actually transpiring in schools, after all?
Because of the persistently high number of cases, the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina has this week called for a strict lockdown before Christmas – including the closure of schools as quickly as possible. Chancellor Angela Merkel likewise pleaded with the state governors to send children into the Christmas break early and extend the holidays.
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