Thread by @dgurdasani1

We're letting kids down badly. Infection rates in primary and secondary school age children continue to rise, and are the highest across all age groups. Worryingly now there are also rises in all other age groups. Rates >1100/100,000 in 10-19 yr olds & 600/100,000 in 5-9 yrs 🧵

>140,000 10-19 yr olds with *confirmed infection* (likely many more infected) in the past two weeks alone. These kids could've been vaccinated rather than exposed to the risk of long COVID, and serious illness.

This should be a scandal but DfE, govt don't seem to care about what is mass infection in children - very clearly related to school opening, and spread from lack of mitigations in schools. Remember that we no longer have contact tracing and quarantine of contacts in schools.

It's clear this is contributing now to an overall rise in cases, and likely rises in hospitalisations as we head into winter. Are there any plans to prevent this, this time round? Or are we going to accept 800 and rising preventable deaths each week?

https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1448665951411453953?s=20

Predictably long COVID numbers have risen in young people, the huge increases seen in these age groups, especially among those reporting infection over the summer. This trend is likely to continue given current infection rates.

https://twitter.com/DLapthorne/status/1447469638984548353?s=20

There should be an uproar about this, but there isn't much reporting of this in the media.
Please write to your MP using the templates below. Exposing children to these risks in completely unacceptable. Every challenging voice matters.

action.unison.org.uk/page/91259/act…