BOULOGNE-BILLANCOURT, France: Less than a week has gone by since French schools reopened after Christmas, but at the Jean Renoir high school in Boulogne-Billancourt, just outside of Paris, one in four teachers and nearly 50 pupils are already sick with COVID-19.
With new testing and contact tracing rules introduced at the start of this term, the head teacher, Aristide Adeilkalam, now faces a huge challenge.
“It’s very, very, very complicated,” Aidelkalam said, his glasses fogging up because of his face mask.
“Forty-seven pupils have COVID. I need to identify the contacts for each. Up until now, we could handle cases one at a time, as they arrived. Now we’re overwhelmed.”
The school has 620 students and 40 teachers.
France has put emphasis on keeping schools open in recent months, no longer rushing to shut down classes with positive coronavirus cases, and it did not extend holidays to let Omicron and Delta waves pass, unlike some of its EU neighbours.
However, schools say it has become very hard to cope with the high increase in COVID-19 cases and the new testing rules.
When a school child tests positive for COVID-19, the rest of its class must each perform three tests over five days – the first test a PCR or antigenic test at a testing centre, the other two a self-administered test.
This has exacerbated the already long queues to get tested at pharmacies and labs as cases numbers rose to record-highs.
In the week to Jan 2, a record 8.3 million coronavirus tests were carried out, and that was before the end of the holiday period.
For all the latest world News Click Here
