Pulling this across from the 'CC General Chat' sub-forum.
I said: "The rationale for not elevating various employment categories to a higher priority in the vaccination programme is based on data which show that, take primary school teachers, the risk of infection is minimally or no more than the risk in their local community generally, and that the IFR is best related to age (no UHC). Bus drivers, taxi drivers, security guards et al are far more vulnerable to infection compared with their peers.
Then consider the male v female risk differential and the BAME v white one as well."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...ups-for-covid-19-vaccination-30-december-2020
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109892v2
There is data to show that the risk of infection for school staff is between 1.5x and 7x greater than the general public depending on role but that the risk of death or severe disease is no greater than the population as a whole. This is due to the severe consequences of covid being linked strongly to poverty and deprivation and not just to exposure.
The government could have gone with public facing occupations (not just teachers) as their rationale for rolling out the vaccination programme after groups 1 - 9 but went with age due to ease and speed of administering.
I recalled this: Full facts:
https://fullfact.org/health/teacher-covid-transmission/ ONS
published an analysis covering the period from 2 September to 16 October, showing that teachers were not significantly more likely to have tested positive than other workers. Although there was a high degree of uncertainty in the findings.
I also looked at this paper (perhaps there is more recent research with different conclusions - which I invite you to share) published by the Lancet: "
SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission in primary schools in England in June–December, 2020 (sKIDs): an active, prospective surveillance study"
Prof Woolhouse, Head of infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh University (and also a member of SPI-M btw), commented: "Even if this virus doesn’t spread easily among the children, it certainly will spread among staff if it gets the opportunity. The evidence so far is that the most dangerous room in the school is not the classroom, it’s the staff room. So schools need to pay attention to that, and not take their eye off the right ball."
If he's right the issue is that school teachers are 'forced' to socialise with other members of staff, and catch it from them. Perhaps there are measures that schools could take to minimise this risk?
We have seen no indicator in the case numbers of increased rates of infection when schools re-opened on 8 Mar, nor when pupils went back for the summer term.
Edit:
@Archie_tect also commented pointed out the disruption infections and sending whole classes home for 10 days has on pupils schooling/learning.
) government plot to increase vaccine uptake in certain communities which other methods (beers) have not reached?
