On 4 May, many scientists, union representatives and parents, including myself, wrote an open letter to the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, warning against removal of mask requirements in English secondary schools from 17 May. We cautioned that this could lead to outbreaks in schools driven by new variants and significant educational disruption. The warnings were ignored.
Schools are now facing very high rates of transmission, with 375,000 children in England missing school for Covid-19-related reasons.
Not only has the Delta variant rapidly spread through schools, and back into the community– helping this highly transmissible variant become dominant – it has also given rise to the third wave of the pandemic, with rapid growth in cases and an increase in hospitalisations. Rather than “follow the data”, as the government claims it has done, it tried to suppress the data on early spread of the variant in schools, despite threats of legal action...
