looks like I was right again....Dr Nagpaul was not speaking for the BMA as a whole and whilst he is a GP a Consultant Paediatric Immunologist has criticised his statement accusing him of misinterpreting the evidence.
Dr Munro accused Dr Nagpaul of making 'clear errors' in warning of the risks
Yep, he’s made a fool of himself - all politically motivated of course, it’s really quite sickening.
CORONAVIRUS
BMA ‘got science wrong’ in urging schools to stay closed
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Schools should begin to reopen to general pupils from June 1, the government has said
Schools should begin to reopen to general pupils from June 1, the government has said
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The largest doctors’ union has been criticised for saying that it is too early to consider opening schools, with other experts accusing it of making errors in its representation of scientific studies from other countries.
The British Medical Association wrote an open letter on Friday to the National Education Union, which represents teachers, supporting its opposition to government plans to reopen schools on June 1.
Chaand Nagpaul, BMA chairman, wrote that the little evidence so far on the potential dangers posed by reopening schools was conflicting and that the teaching unions had been “absolutely right” to urge caution.
“Until we have got case numbers much lower, we should not consider reopening schools,” he said.
Other experts took issue with the comments. “The BMA have caused headlines by focusing on the wrong part of the debate and by doing so have not presented a balanced representation of their members’ views,” Saul Faust, professor of paediatric immunology and infectious diseases at Southampton University and University Hospital Southampton, said.
He added: “Society has to reopen, children need to return to school as there are negatives for many of having to stay at home and we need to be able to study transmission dynamics in all ages to help us learn how to manage this virus.
“Slowly opening schools in a controlled way will be of low risk to children’s health and less risk to teachers than the risk to many other workers when on public transport.”
In his letter Dr Nagpaul cited a study from New South Wales in Australia, which suggested that very little transmission of the virus was associated with schools. However, he argued that the picture was confused by a separate study from Berlin, which looked at the amount of virus carried by infected children.
He wrote that the German study showed that children were “just as likely to be infected as adults and may be just as infectious”.
Alasdair Munro, clinical research fellow in paediatric infectious diseases at University Hospital, said that the letter contained “clear errors in interpretation of the evidence of transmission in children”.
He added: “The German study examining viral loads did not find children were ‘just as likely to be infected as adults’. It made no comment on this at all, but did find substantially lower numbers of children positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the cohort.
“In addition, the study did not demonstrate children are ‘just as infectious’ as adults. The study made no firm conclusions, but did find viral load increased with age . . . Whilst not the sole indicator of how infectious an individual is, this certainly does not indicate children are as infectious as adults.”
Catherine Carroll-Meehan, head of the school of education and sociology at the University of Portsmouth, said: “Given that we are in warmer months, a compromise might be to have children return to education and use outdoor learning spaces, parks, playgrounds in addition to the classroom. The Danish have recently opened schools and applied social distancing effectively.
“The key to this is knowing who has the virus, who is symptomatic and asymptomatic, testing for antibodies and reassuring the public about safety.”
A spokeswoman for the BMA said: “We are not commenting any further on this today
