Covid 'a constant' in schools: Mixed reaction among Cork principals in relation to mask-wearing mandate

A CORK principal has described how Covid has become a “constant” in his school and says he believes that now is not the time to remove control measures put in place to reduce the spread of the virus in school settings.

Ken Foley, principal of Padre Pio national school in Churchfield, said that new cases of the virus are being reported in the school community on a daily basis.

“It is just a constant since Christmas,” said Mr Foley. “On a daily basis, we are sending out emails [notifying families of a positive case]. It has just been consistently going.”

The comments come as latest figures show at least 1,340 children aged up to 14 years in Cork have tested positive for Covid in the past two weeks.

The figures from the HSE Health Protection Surveillance Centre relate to children who have had a positive PCR test for Covid-19 and do not include information on those with a positive antigen test. Thus, the number of children who have tested positive for the virus could actually be much higher.

Adrian Breathnach, principal of Gaelscoil Pheig Sayers in Cork City, said while Covid cases are still being reported in the school community, he felt that changes to mask-wearing at this stage would not make a huge difference to case numbers.

The Padre Pio school principal said that after contracting the virus, the vast majority of children isolate at home and then return to school as expected but “some children are still getting very sick as are some of the adults”.

The issue has presented many challenges, not least in terms of staffing, and Mr Foley said that sourcing substitute teachers is still presenting difficulties.

He said that while he is keen to see normality return to the school setting, he believes it is necessary to keep control measures in place in schools to keep the virus “at bay”.

“We want all control measures to remain in place for the foreseeable future, at least until after Easter. Certainly, we do not want to take our foot off the pedal at all. It’s still very prevalent in schools at the moment.”

Mr Foley made the comments ahead of a meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team to discuss remaining Covid-related restrictions, including mask-wearing in schools.

Meanwhile, Gaelscoil Pheig Sayers principal Mr Breathnach said he is hopeful that mask-wearing and other restrictions would be scrapped after the mid-term. Like other schools, the gaelscoil saw significant numbers of cases of the virus reported among the community after Christmas.

“January was definitely very challenging [with] a lot of Covid cases both amongst children and teachers, but coming to February, now the last few weeks definitely, the children are back at school and the numbers have gone down,” said Mr Breathnach.

“We’ve nearly full numbers, which we wouldn’t have had in January. So there has been a huge improvement.”

He said that the restrictions introduced in schools to reduce the spread of the virus had impacted pupils.

“They’ve [the pupils] been brilliant, I have to say, but I just think it would be great from a social point of view [to remove restrictions].

“Personally, I’d like to see it [mask-wearing among primary school children] go. We’ll obviously follow whatever direction [provided by the department] but I think the conversation I’m having now is that the schools want to go back to a bit of normality. We think it’s probably not going to make much of a difference, to be honest,” said Mr Breathnach.

“I think we’d like to see maybe after the midterm, we could maybe take the masks off and try it that way. I’d like to see it happen anyway, I’d like to see as normal as possible, if we could. That would be my own view.”

He said he would also like to see the removal of pods and the better mixing of classes.

Health Protection Surveillance Centre figures show that 8.6% of eligible children aged between five and 11 years around the country are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19, while 13% of eligible children are partially vaccinated against the virus.