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Schools may have to close as virus variant may be worse for children

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Date21 December 2020
Published date21 December 2020
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, also a member of the Government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats advisory group NervTag said there is some evidence this virus may be more easy for children to catch.

But he said it was too early to say what measures could be needed.

Asked about possible school closures, Professor Ferguson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “So undoubtedly increased transmissibility limits our options for manoeuvre even more, and there is a hint from the data that this variant may infect children slightly more effectively than the previous variants, so it’s very difficult to prove causality.

“I think what we’ll see in the next two weeks though, whilst schools are closed, is probably all the variants of the virus in circulation at the moment declining, we’ll be tracking very carefully whether we can see differences in that rate of decline and really it’s the data which is being put together now and unfortunately over the Christmas break which is going to inform policy measures in January.

“It’s just too early to tell. It is going to be difficult no doubt about that… but it’s too early to say precisely what additional measures might be needed.”

He added: “The faster we can get the vaccine into people’s arms, the quicker we’ll be able to, not go back completely to normal, but at least to be able to relax restrictions.

“The Government gets criticised for changing policy all the time, this virus is unpredictable, how people behave is unpredictable, and so we will track the epidemic as we always have done and...

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