Most children with underlying health conditions, and those whose parents are extremely medically vulnerable, should return to school, according to new advice from theIt is now “difficult to justify cocooning” in most children with underlying condition, given current knowledge about Covid-19, the HSE says.
It also include people with cancer undergoing chemotherapy; undergoing radiotherapy for lung cancer; and people with leukaemia and other blood cancers “who are at any stage of active treatment”. According to the HSE, children seem generally less likely to catch Covid-19, and more likely than adults to have no symptoms or to have mild disease.
Meanwhile, the chief executive of the HSE Paul Reid said this was going to be “a more difficult winter than we’ve ever faced before” as the HSE attempted to scale up services that had been stalled because of Covid-19. Testing and tracing was 15 per cent of defence, he said, while 80 per cent was public health restrictions such as social distancing and hand washing.