Covid-19: Continual testing at Guernsey schools 'for safety'

Continual coronavirus testing at schools and early years providers in Guernsey is to be rolled out to ensure safety, health and education heads say.

Work is under way for essential workers' and vulnerable children to be allowed to return next week.

Head teachers and early years providers are asking parents if they want half-term childcare and child supervision.

But it would only be available for key workers if all a households' adults had to leave it for work, the States said.

In the first bailiwick-wide lockdown, education settings stayed open to vulnerable children and children of essential and critical workers to allow them to work.

However, health and education bosses said they wanted to keep numbers on any education site as low as possible during the current lockdown and it was "necessary to further filter those eligible to access on-site childcare".

Strengthened criteria for qualifying meant only children whose parents were "both essential workers (unless in a single parent household), and where all adults in the home need to leave the house to work will be allowed to attend", the States said.

Teachers and leaders would issue individual invitations to eligible children and they would all be tested before entering sites and then "on a rolling basis going forwards" to ensure safety, it said.

Initially, the focus would be on pre-schools and nurseries, special schools, primary schools and pupils in years 7, 8 and 9.

Children attending special schools and who had complex medical needs would be supported through a "bespoke programme of partnership support", the States added.

A bailiwick lockdown was announced on 23 January, following four Covid-19 cases of unknown origin.

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