More than one in eight primary schoolchildren in England were infected with Covid during the last week of January, the highest prevalence for any age group at any stage during the pandemic.
Figures released on Friday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that infections have now peaked among primary schoolchildren, but the surge is continuing to cause significant disruption with large numbers of children absent from school due to positive tests.
The peak in infections comes as the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is expected to make a recommendation as to whether Covid vaccination should be extended to all children aged five or over. This week, the NHS began to roll out vaccines to children aged between five and 11 in the clinically vulnerable category after the JCVI approved the move in December.
Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, which represents many primary school leaders, said: “The very high rates of infection amongst primary pupils means that the pandemic certainly isn’t over for schools – our members are telling us that disruption due to Covid is as bad as it’s ever been.
“There’s a strange disconnect between the lack of mitigations and restrictions, and the lived experiences of families and schools right now,” he added. “Covid is still having a significant impact on education.”
Prevalence remains high among secondary pupils, with an infection rate of 7.6% – one in 15 – for those in the school years 7 to 11, the ONS figures showed. This compares with one in 20 people infected in England overall with an estimated 2.6 million infections. Similar rates were seen in Wales, while Scotland recorded Covid-19 infections in one in 30 people and Northern Ireland said one in 15 people were infected.
The lowest rates of infections were seen among the over-70s with a rate of just under 2%, the ONS reported. Hospital admissions and the numbers of patients in ICUs with Covid are also falling, government figures show.
The ONS latest figures suggest that rates in primary schoolchildren in England have peaked and are beginning to fall. Prof Kevin McConway, an emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University, said: “There’s a small bit of good news about that age group in the daily modelled figures, published today – they show the estimated rate beginning to fall between 26 January and the end of that week on the 29th, though it’s a small fall and that trend is too short-term to be much of a comfort yet.”
Speaking to the pandemic response and recovery all-party parliamentary group of MPs earlier this week, Prof Allyson Pollock, of Newcastle University, raised concerns about the continued testing and isolation of schoolchildren. “Healthy children are being tested and isolated unnecessarily,” she said. “Children are at extremely low risk of severe disease and many of them will be asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms.”
Others have emphasised arguments for extending vaccinations to younger age groups, as many other countries have already done, and for more focus to be placed on mitigation, including improving ventilation in classrooms.
An analysis released on Friday as part of evidence used by the Sage advisory group suggested that Omicron was no more likely to lead to hospital admissions for infants than the Delta variant. Previously, there had been some concern about the apparent increase in the proportion of infants in hospital with Covid-19. However, the latest analysis by the Medical Research Council and the UK Health Security Agency found this could be explained by cases in general being skewed towards younger ages for the Omicron wave. Once this was taken into account, there was found to be no difference in risk of hospital admission between the two variants.
