Dear All,
As you may be aware, many Coronavirus restrictions are being relaxed from Monday July 19th. Although the headlines suggest that this will allow schools and settings to return to near-normal service, the reality is more complicated.
The Department for Education Early Years Guidance issued last night confirms that NHS Test & Trace (T&T) will be taking over contact tracing for confirmed cases on July 19th, meaning that settings will no longer need to exclude groups of children and staff who have had close contact within the infectious period. Only those “the positive case specifically identifies … as being a close contact” will need to isolate and settings will only need to be involved at all in “exceptional cases”. On August 16th, all under-18s will become exempt from isolation if they are a close contact of a confirmed case. This 4-week gap is therefore the area that needs clarification.
How T&T will attempt to contact children aged 0-4 to establish their close contacts from 3-4 days earlier and (when somehow able to get this information from your children) how they will then know surnames, phone numbers, etc for them remains a complete mystery. As such, the interim system is either a facade to disguise the reality that contact group isolation will effectively stop in two weeks - OR - an entirely misjudged attempt to continue the same pattern of exclusions in a wholly inefficient and unnecessarily complicated new format that will actually extend the disruption for most families. As all children within current Early Years bubbles are deemed to be close contacts of each other, this new system does not remove the need for the bubble system, as widely claimed. Opening up these bubbles to allow the evening wraparound and other mixing would only serve to enlarge the groups of children and staff who would be excluded if there was a confirmed case.
We are seeking urgent clarification from DfE and T&T, who today initially denied that they were taking on Early Years contact tracing at all, before checking and then confirming that they are being briefed on the new system later today - two days after the plan was made public.
As such, ECCC is unable to confirm any changes to the current restrictions until key questions are answered. We will contact all families directly once a solid plan can be made. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
FACE MASKS
In the meantime, we ask all adult visitors to continue wearing masks throughout July and August, as a courtesy to our staff. Our workforce was not prioritised for vaccination, so we are still several months away from full immunisation - leaving Centre staff at a greater risk of serious illness. Although the UK government recommendation stops in two weeks, the World Health Organisation strongly advises that masks continue to be worn in crowded spaces, shops and public transport. As we receive several hundred adult visits per day, we ask that mask wearing continues until all staff have been able to complete their vaccinations. We recognise that some parents may choose to not carry masks routinely after 19/07, so disposable masks will be available from reception without charge from this date.
Kind Regards,
James.