Because the Covid-19 also strikes the youngest.

In a column published Thursday by

Le Monde

, around thirty doctors, researchers and teachers appealed to the government.

“In the United States, Canada, India, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain… Pediatricians and learned societies are calling for more protection for those under 12.

In our turn, today, to sound the alarm bell, ”they write two weeks before the start of the school year.

The collective which counts among its ranks epidemiologists Dominique Costagliola and William Dab, infectious disease specialist Gilles Pialoux and Dr Jérôme Marty, president of the union of liberal doctors UFML, is worried about the strong contagiousness of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

They underline that "the rate of hospitalization of 0-19 year olds is increasing in countries where the Delta variant is in the majority", which is the case in France with a prevalence of over 98%.

“In France, during the past year, 1.2% of 0-9 year olds who tested positive were hospitalized and the number of hospitalizations is now double that of last year at the same date, that of 10-19 year olds, the quadruple ”, they worry.

The incidence rate among 0-19 year olds is five times higher

In order to best protect the health of the students, the signatories of the forum affirm that "effective measures to prevent contamination must be adopted from the start of the school year", scheduled for September 2 for all. Four levels of health measures (green, yellow, orange and red) to be implemented in schools were defined in the protocol published on July 28.

"We must, without further delay, define their territorial level of application, the epidemiological indicators, as well as the thresholds triggering the passage from one level to another," said the group.

It would be "unthinkable to consider a resumption at" level 2 "of the health protocol (Editor's note: yellow, which provides in particular for the face-to-face reception of all students), while the incidence rate among 0-19 year olds is five times higher than for the start of the 2020 school year ”.

"Failure" of the air purification protocol

The mask should not be removed in elementary schools, where "the closure of classes at the first identified case should be extended to all levels", continues the forum.

The signatories also point to the "failure" of the protocol in terms of air purification.

"Windows must be opened much more frequently and the recommendation to equip establishments with CO2 detectors cannot be enough: this must be the rule", according to these professionals who deplore "that no measure targets canteens".

"This summer, Ireland and Quebec have equipped all classes with CO2 detectors, while New York, Philadelphia and Frankfurt are installing purifiers", argue the signatories.

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