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23rd May 2021
03:45pm BST

Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London, said: "It feels like bad news that we’re not being told.
"There is a narrative that schools are safe but the data clearly shows this variant can and does spread in schools. Two weeks ago, the Singaporean health minister closed schools because of the risk of greater spread in children of this variant.
"Parents, teachers and children just need this information in order to take steps to keep themselves and their communities safe. The new variant is the biggest threat to the roadmap according to Sage, but the data is just not coming out in a transparent and timely manner. I just feel like PHE is letting us down at a crucial time."
Meanwhile Deepti Gurdasani, from Queen Mary University, London, said it was "incredibly worrying" that the government had decided to lift restrictions in schools. She said: "We know from media reports there are many outbreaks of the so-called 'India variant' in schools but there’s no systematic data. In Bolton, it’s risen fastest in school-age children and it looks like schools are contributing to the rapid spread of the virus … and yet at this crucial moment, the government has gone ahead and lifted mitigations. It’s incredibly worrying."This is a public health emergency and PHE is supposed to be an independent public health body. It is crucial that they have the public’s trust."
The head of education for Unison, said that the union had asked for the data on the spread of the variant in schools for weeks. They had apparently been told that it would be published in the report. A spokesperson for Downing Street said: "Twice a week Public Health England publish a breakdown of the number of cases of each variant in the UK. "Given public interest in variants of concern, we are looking at ways to publish cases transmitted in different settings in a robust and clear way. PHE will publish this data in due course."Explore more on these topics:

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