Holohan: Schools 'not high-risk' and can reopen safely

Dr Tony Holohan said they will not be advising Government that schools remain closed, despite some schools preparing for that eventuality. File picture: Danny Lawson/PAWire

Schools are “not high-risk” environments and can reopen safely next week after the mid-term break, the chief medical officer has said.

Dr Tony Holohan and his deputy Dr Heather Burns have said they will not be advising Government that schools remain closed, despite some schools preparing for that eventuality.

They were speaking as five more deaths related to Covid-19 and 720 new cases were confirmed[/url[.

“Overall, the message is how much lower the positivity rate in schools is than the positivity rates among close contacts out in the general community which is about 10%. It backs up the data that schools are not high-risk environments for Covid-19,” Dr Burns said.

Dr Holohan said: “We do not anticipate being in a position of going back to advise that on public health grounds. 

We wouldn’t see a reason to advise that schools shouldn’t reopen next week as planned.

The total number of Covid-19 related deaths is now 1,890 and there is now a total of 58,767 confirmed cases of the virus.

The HSE will today apologise for the impact of it standing down its contact tracing system two weekends ago, admitting the situation was “not ideal”.

A HSE delegation, led by Niamh O’Beirne the National Lead for Testing and Tracing, will appear before the Oireachtas Health Committee.

Her opening statement, seen by the Irish Examiner, will say the significant increase in demand and the number of detected cases in its community in October has challenged our systems, particularly our contact tracing service.

“We asked a limited number of people [1,971] who received a positive result from October 16 or October 18 to notify their own close contacts of their result and arrange a test through their GP,” she will say.

“This was clearly not ideal. We apologise to the 1,971 people impacted," she will say.