Only 1.6% of Schoolchildren Forced to Self-Isolate For 10 Days Went on to Develop Covid

A new study by a team of researchers at Oxford has found that of the one million schoolchildren sent home and forced to self-isolate for 10 days every week last term, 98.4% did not go on to develop Covid. The Telegraph has more.

Forcing hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren to self-isolate because a classmate had Covid was unnecessary as daily testing would have been as effective, an official study suggests.
The results of the study, by the University of Oxford, emerged on the last day of term for most schools, when more than one million pupils are off because of the virus and after months of disruption to education. …
The team behind the study said the results also offered reassurance for policymakers trying to end the pingdemic because they showed that the virus could be controlled in a less “destructive” way.
It came as the latest figures revealed that up to one million people a week are being asked to isolate in England and Wales, with record numbers being pinged by the NHS app.
The Oxford study found that 98.4 per cent of children who were sent home for 10 days never went on to develop Covid – a result set to anger parents and pupils forced to stay at home needlessly.

Worth reading in full.

For those that can’t get past the Telegraph‘s paywall, BBC News also has the story.

This study complements numerous other studies – such as this one in Sweden – showing that very, very few people are infected with COVID-19 in schools, whether children or staff, and that school closures were completely unnecessary. Bizarrely, the BBC quotes the lead author of the Oxford study describing his findings as “good news” since it means sending a million schoolchildren home every week just in case they have Covid can now be replaced by daily testing, with only those who test positive being sent home. But, of course, it isn’t “news” since we’ve know how pointless the quarantining of healthy schoolchildren is for at least a year. And I suspect parents of school-age children (like me) won’t regard this news as “good”, so much as confirmation of their worst fears, namely, that their children’s sacrifice over the past 16 months has been for nought.