Michael, you are right to question the value of offering UK Government guidance on mask wearing at school as a rule of thumb for global good practice, given the poor results of the UK in controlling the pandemic. I should have inserted a warning about this!
However my personal view is that the guidance is correct as it is very difficult to find scientific evidence one way or another in relation to masks at school as the literature is scanty.
WHO advice is here
WHO-2019-nCov-IPC_Masks-2020.4-eng.pdf
and states that
'At present, there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID- 19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.'
Hence authorities need to make up their own minds based on the benefit versus risk of wearing masks at school. The benefit is to prevent cross-transmission; the risk is to reduce communication between children and teachers, and perhaps to cause discomfort and create anxiety. In relation to the first point, as Sara Tornquist points out, the spread of COVID among school children is extremely low.
However as Stefano del Torso points out, ASPHER recommends mask wearing in children.
So it seems that we may need to wait till after the pandemic has subsided, to discover which approach is more correct.
Tony Waterston
CHIFA profile: Tony Waterston is a retired consultant paediatrician who worked mainly in the community in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He spent 6 years working in Zambia and Zimbabwe and directed the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Diploma in Palestinian Child Health teaching programme in the occupied Palestinian territories. He was an Editor of the Journal of Tropical Pediatrics and is on the Executive Committee of the International Society for Social Pediatrics. His academic interests are child poverty, advocacy for child health and children's rights. He is currently the lead moderator of CHIFA www.chifa.org He is also a member of the HIFA Steering Group.
www.hifa.org/people/steering-group www.hifa.org/support/members/tony
Tony.Waterston AT newcastle.ac.uk
