Which now applies to parents and students in Berlin

by time news

BerlinA case that could occur at any school in Berlin. In class, a child is dealing with a teacher who tests positive for the coronavirus shortly afterwards. The child is rated as contact person 1 by the district health department. It has to be quarantined for 14 days. In the parallel class, another child is classified as contact person 1. This time, however, to a classmate. The child also goes into quarantine and is allowed to go back to school on the sixth day if they can present a negative test.

There is confusion in the city among students, teachers, and in some cases among employees of the twelve health departments. In the federal government, the rule has been in effect since Monday that, under certain conditions, children can be released from quarantine after five instead of 14 days. A distinction is made between contact persons with infected students and infected adults. In other words, if you have an infected person sitting next to you, you can test yourself free after five days, but if the teacher tests positive, the child has to be in isolation for 14 days – which at first glance doesn’t make any sense.

A supposed formalism that can throw whole families into serious problems. Children are isolated for two weeks, from their friends, acquaintances, grandparents, with all the consequences. Balcony is allowed, if available, courtyard or garden not. Homeschooling is compulsory and there is a high risk of losing touch with the rest of the class in the subject matter. In the worst case, the transfer will be in danger in the coming summer. Parents, on the other hand, have to work from home during this time if they can. Very few people in Berlin have a nanny.

“The distinction between children and adults is incomprehensible,” criticizes Patrick Larscheid, medical officer in Reinickendorf. “Politicians do not use the opportunity to explain why they do something in a certain way. She just says she’ll do it. “

The basis for the new provision could be studies such as the work by the Berlin virologist Christian Drosten that was published in the journal Science. It shows that the viral load between children and adults is similarly high. The Charité researchers determined the amount of virus genetic material in the PCR sample for more than 25,000 Covid-19 cases. People without signs of illness as well as patients with symptoms of varying severity up to hospital cases were included. The result: In adults between 20 and 65 years of age, there were “no significant differences” in viral load. In the samples of the youngest children between 0 and 5 years of age, the lowest viral loads were found; in older children and adolescents, the values ​​became more similar to those of adults with increasing age.

“But the viral load alone does not tell you about the infection,” says Jakob Maske, pediatrician and spokesman for the Federal Association for Paediatricians and Adolescents. V. for Berlin. The viruses would be passed on by adults much more frequently than by children. “Our experience has shown that children in schools are more often infected with Corona by their teachers or their educators – and less by their classmates. If we look back, then infections in schools were more likely to have been passed on by adults than by the children themselves, ”he says. In this respect, the distinction between young people and adults, which was made in the quarantine rules, is logical and consistent – free testing if the person sitting next to you tests positive, but not if the teacher is affected. “Ultimately, however, it is not politicians who decide on the quarantine, but the medical officer. And this medical decision must remain free – in Berlin the regulation is handled differently than the federal guideline provides. “

Expert: Children very rarely get infected from infected people at school

Berit Lange, Head of Clinical Epidemiology at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI), explained at a press conference on Monday that there are also big differences, for example between the household and the classroom. In the household, the probability of a secondary case after a proven infection is around 25 to 40 percent. “In the school sector, the risk of being tested positive after contact with an infected person is between one and three percent.” With such low probabilities, it makes sense that not the entire class – or even several – are quarantined, as is the case it was only recently the case, but only targeted isolated students.

In principle, the child’s immune system seems to be better prepared for the attacks of Sars-CoV-2 than that of adults: According to a study, the immune cells of the upper respiratory tract are already on heightened alert and can fight the virus faster and more violently in the event of an infection, before it multiplies massively and penetrates the deeper airways, as a working group from the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) at the Charité recently found out. This probably explains why many children only develop mild symptoms and are so much less likely to develop Covid-19 as adults.

The Berlin quarantine rule is apparently not immediately comprehensible, even for experts. The Pankow City Councilor for Health, Torsten Kühne (CDU), asked about the correct interpretation of the passages that concern the isolation of children. He sent a questionnaire to State Secretary Martin Matz from the Senate Health Administration. There was a need for clarification on seven points. Among other things, the question of who the regulations affect at all. “The term pupil refers to pupils in the sense of the Berlin School Act,” replied Matz. Neukölln’s City Councilor for Health, Falko Liecke (CDU), figured out who the new rules specifically apply to: “We interpret it to mean that all other students, including those at secondary vocational schools, are not affected.”

Medical officer: At the end of the day, medical professionals assess medical issues

Public health officer Larscheid lacks a professional dialogue. For example about the proportionality of the restrictions. “There is absolutely no exchange with the top of the house,” says the Reinickendorf physician, referring to Health Senator Dilek Kalayci (SPD). “At the working level, it is completely unclear whether an exchange is included in a decision.” But in medical questions, adds Larscheid, doctors should have the last word. “The Senate Administration cannot order how to operate an appendix,” he says. “Neither can she order how a measure depriving her of liberty on the basis of the Infection Protection Act, namely a quarantine for schoolchildren, has to look like in individual cases.”

City councilor Liecke refers to paragraph eight of the Berlin ordinance. “In it, the health department is provided with its own regulatory competencies.” Not when there is contact between schoolchildren. “But when a student is classified as contact person 1 of a teacher. Then we have legroom. “

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