Coronavirus Outbreak Shuts School in Dundee as 27 People Test Positive

Health officials in Tayside have confirmed that twenty one staff members and two students at a Dundee school have tested positive for covid19 in a recent coronavirus outbreak. All the children and staff at Kingspark School in Dundee have been told to self-isolate for at least 14 days. The cases appeared just two weeks after the schools were reopened in Scotland on the 12^th of August.

The school was built in 2009 and caters for special needs, it has been closed by NHS Tayside last Wednesday due to the recent coronavirus outbreak so that all the staff and pupils can self-isolate because of the pupils’ complex needs. NHS Tayside confirmed that four ‘community contacts’ were among the 27 infected with the virus. The health officials announced on Monday that 27 people were tested positive, up from 12 on Friday.

Contact tracing found links to 2 other schools in the area with one positive case at Happy Times out-of-school club at Downfield Primary School and another at St peter’s and St Paul’s primary.

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The Kingspark school has 185 students aged between five and eighteen, with many of them having additional medical problems and physical disabilities. The school has been closed to undergo deep clean until at least next week and all the parents of the pupils have received a letter from the NHS and local council that they will be kept updated.

The recent coronavirus outbreak in Scotland is at or either linked to schools since their reopening earlier in August and in some cases has resulted in entire classes being told to self-isolate and stay at home. These cases involve schools in Blairgowrie, Johnstone, Glasgow, Paisley, Coatbridge, and Perth.

After weeks of fall in cases, the coronavirus infection rate in Scotland is rising again.

83 new coronavirus cases were detected in Scotland on Sunday and 123 on Saturday, which is the highest daily figure since May. In contrast, there were between one and four cases a day in July, however, there are no new coronavirus deaths since Wednesday. The outbreaks in Scotland came after the Prime Minister of UK Boris Johnson, after his holiday in Scotland, urged the parents to send their children back to the schools when schools in England will reopen at the start of next month.

The Prime Minister said in a video posted on social media that he knows that the parents are still worried about sending their kids back to school but he insisted that going back to school is vital for a child’s mental and physical health. He also assured the parents by saying that the risk of them getting the disease is ‘very, very, very small’ and the risk of them getting severely ill is ‘very, very, very, very, very small indeed’.

Moreover, Jenny Harries Deputy Chief Medical Officer of England said that the chances of students getting hit by a bus on their way to school are more likely than them catching the virus in the school.

According to her the chances of catching the flu or involved in a traffic accident are probably higher than the risk posed by the coronavirus.