Hi All,
Some further guidance on next week’s changes has been issued. Although it in no way answers many of the practical questions and concerns raised by settings, we are now able to confirm the key points of the changes:
In-setting contact tracing and exclusions of whole room ‘bubbles’ for confirmed cases will stop.
NHS Test & Trace will take over contact tracing directly with confirmed cases. For young children, this means they will speak to you as parents/carers to establish close contacts. T&T will then advise these contacts to self-isolate directly - as per the previous system for the general public.
As most children will not be able to provide any useable information on who they had particular close contact with 2-4 days earlier (and will provide first names at best with no contact details), T&T will seemingly be focussing on social contacts, such as immediate family, sleepovers, etc.
Settings will only be contacted by T&T in the event of larger outbreaks or other complex circumstances.
From August 16th, children will be exempt from self-isolation even if identified as a close contact. This exemption also applies to fully vaccinated adults, although this will not prevent most Centre staff isolation being required until September, as the workforce was not prioritised for vaccination.
It is difficult to predict what the impact of these changes will be. It seems likely that reduced tracing and isolation will increase the number of cases. Before August 16th, this will continue to take children and staff away from the Centre in roughly proportionate numbers. After children become exempt, it is likely that the Centre will face severe operational difficulties if there are any positive cases, as staff will be required to self-isolate but the number of children attending will not drop. As refunds are issued in these cases of operational closure and the furlough scheme has already been scaled back significantly, any outbreaks will be extremely financially damaging for the Centre.
In line with the Public Health Respiratory Infection requirements issued earlier this week, we therefore need to remain vigilant and ensure that staff and children at risk of transmitting any form of respiratory disease are kept away from the Centre. We recognise that these unprecedented regional requirements will cause significant disruption to many families, but ask that upmost caution is shown when your children have any symptoms at all. Hopefully the new rules will balance out as although individual children will need to miss more days here and there, there will be fewer wholesale contact group exclusions. The main points of the new requirements are:
Even if children test negative for coronavirus, they should not return to nursery until after their primary symptoms have ended - and 24 hours after any temperature has passed.
Any child with a temperature over 37.8C and any other respiratory infection symptom should be excluded from nursery care.
Once confirmed negative for coronavirus, children can return with a persistent runny nose or gentle “irritable” cough, but children with new, worsening or severe respiratory symptoms must remain away. Children with a deep or hacking cough must not attend.
We also ask that all adult visitors continue to wear masks throughout July and August, so to protect our staff team until they can be vaccinated.
I hope that this new stage is a small step towards returning to normalcy for us all. As contact tracing and exclusion will still apply within the staff team, we cannot safely mix staff groups until they are exempt from isolation, so will not be resuming the 5-5:50pm evening wraparound until full vaccination has been achieved or the rules are updated again (likely September in either case).
Kind Regards,
James.