Marius Gilbert on the closure of schools: “It’s a bit of an easy target”
The epidemiologist believes that from a mental health perspective, closing schools is a bad option.
Lhe school is one of the components in which we know that there is transmission, with the world of work and the private sphere. And in the last two cases we know that there has been a lot of relaxation lately, ”explained Marius Gilbert to the RTBF news.
“It’s a bit of an easy target too, because you can hardly tell people not to see anyone anymore, and it’s not necessarily in the work sector where the transmissions are made. So we turn to the school, but we can ask ourselves the question of why close the nearly 70% of schools where there were no cases? Turning only to school seems a little easy. “
“Either we consider that the school is an important place of transmission, and we must then go to the end of the logic and allow the vaccination of teachers. Attention has been drawn for several weeks to mental health, and from this point of view closing schools is a bad option. “
The epidemiologist also explained the option of “mini-containment” for a few weeks: “The evolution of transmission follows mathematical models fairly well. If we have a dropout on the rise, which is not impossible, then indeed we could go through a fixed period, for example three weeks, to mobilize all sectors, including closing schools a week earlier before the Easter holidays, to put the brakes on. Vaccination should be maximized during this time, to come out at the end of the Easter holidays with a much lower level of transmission and with more people vaccinated in order to have a much more peaceful end of the academic year. “