Covid Update 18.09.2020

18th September 2020

Dear parents and carers,

COVID-19 update - 18.9.20

Another lovely week in school and lots of amazing, fun learning going on. Thank you for helping your children with their home learning tasks, they are really enjoying your involvement as much as we are.

As you are probably aware as it’s all across the media, testing is very difficult to access and can be very frustrating. I would like to again, thank you for your patience. It is really important that if your child is displaying any of the COVID-19 symptoms that you order a test as quickly as possible and inform school. I have attached a letter to parents/carers from the Director of Public Health, Rachel Wigglesworth which contains more information of how to obtain a test, the information has changed slightly so please read it carefully. Unfortunately, there are changes daily so please ensure you keep yourselves up to date by reading these weekly communications or by calling school if you are unsure and need some extra guidance.

There are many common colds around at the moment and these shouldn’t be confused with COVID symptoms. The main COVID symptoms, as mentioned in my previous communication, are:

 

High temperature – feeling hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)

New, continuous cough – coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)

Loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different from normal

 

If your child is going to be absent from school, please contact us after 8am. If we do not answer then either try again or leave a message asking us to call you back. We will call you as soon as we can to discuss the illness further and help you to ascertain whether you need to order a test and self isolate with the rest of the household. Sometimes it just helps to talk to somebody about the next steps and help iron out anxieties. I do not have access to figures in England yet but this week alone, Scotland saw a request for 17,000 tests for children and of those only 2 were positive. (0.01%). If you have been trying to get hold of a test for 3 days or more and have still been unsuccessful then please contact us and we will see if we can get an urgent booking, depending on symptoms and circumstance. If you have taken a test, then please contact us as soon as you get the results. Online learning will be provided for those in quarantine if they are well enough to continue learning (eg if they are not displaying symptoms but somebody in the household is).

As always, if you are unsure of anything in this communication then please do not hesitate to contact me on head@germoe.cornwall.sch.uk

Have a lovely weekend

Paula Blackburn