The UK government remains locked in a stand-off with teaching unions and local authorities who are resisting reopening schools at the beginning of June as part of plans to ease the lockdown.
Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, on Sunday weighed into the dispute calling on those authorities against the plans, to “look to their responsibilities”.
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, he also acknowledged that the contact-tracing system central to relaxing restrictions, would not be ready by mid-May as originally promised.
In a sign that the consensus over schools policy is fraying, both Liverpool and Hartlepool city councils have warned it is too soon to open classes for more pupils.
Mr Gove said: “You can never eliminate risk” of contracting coronavirus unless you kept the public “perpetually imprisoned”. Addressing local authorities, he said: “I respectfully ask them to think again. The clear scientific and clinical advice is that it is safe to have schools reopen, accompanied with social distancing.
“If you really care about children, you’ll want them to be in schools. You will want them to be learning. You will want them to have new opportunities,” he said.
The government issued advice last Monday that nurseries could bring back all children on June 1, while primary schools would take back children in reception, Year 1 and Year 6, with children in small classrooms observing social distancing modelled on the approach Denmark has taken.
However, local authorities, teaching unions and the British Medical Association have all raised safety concerns for teachers and pupils.
Dr Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the World Health Organisation, told the BBC that evidence showed children were “less capable” of spreading the disease. “What we have seen in countries where schools have remained open is that there have not been big outbreaks in schools,” she said.
Meanwhile Mr Gove announced on Sunday that the UK government had recruited 17,000 people to form England’s army of contact-tracers seeking to contain the spread of coronavirus as lockdown restrictions are eased.
Speaking on Friday, Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis said that only 1,500 contact-tracers had been recruited at the start of the week.
But Mr Gove told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme that ministers were on course to reach their target of recruiting 18,000.
The tracers, due to start work on Monday, are a crucial pillar of the government’s “test, track and trace” strategy, which ministers hope will help prevent a second wave of infections when schools and more workplaces reopen in June.
Health secretary Matt Hancock has said the programme should be primed to launch by mid-May. However, Mr Gove confirmed on Sunday that the system would only be ready by the end of this month.
Alok Sharma, business secretary, insisted later on Sunday that the safety of children and teachers was “absolutely paramount”. However, he was unable to guarantee the contact-tracing system would be in place by 1 June.
Asked at the daily Downing Street briefing if the programme would be up and running in time for schools reopening, he only replied that safety measures had been set out for schools to keep people safe.
Mr Sharma announced on Sunday that an additional £84m had been made available to universities racing to develop a coronavirus vaccine.
He said AstraZeneca and Oxford university had finalised a “global licensing agreement” to mass produce and manufacture a vaccine. If successful, he said the pharmaceuticals group would work to make 30m doses available for use in the UK by September.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzNhMjRkMGRhLTRjMmYtNGZlOC04MmM3LWU2YzNhZmU5Mzk3NNIBP2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzNhMjRkMGRhLTRjMmYtNGZlOC04MmM3LWU2YzNhZmU5Mzk3NA?oc=5
2020-05-17 18:26:45Z
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