Teachers not at higher risk of Covid than other groups: RIVM boss

Primary schools and daycare centers can reopen safely, Jaap van Dissel of public health institute RIVM said in a briefing to parliament on Thursday. Teachers are not at higher risk of contracting the coronaviurs than other population groups, and kids up to the age of 12 really play a small role in spreading the virus, he said, ANP and NOS report.

According to Van Dissel, people who work in healthcare, such as nursing home employees, are at higher risk of contracting the virus. But teachers' chance of getting it is about the same as other professions.

Through source and contact tracing, the health authorities try to identify who first contracted the virus and to whom the virus was then spread. Children in the age group 0 to 12 rarely infect others, Van Dissel said. If they do transmit the virus, it is mainly to their peers and to people in the age group 30 to 15 - their parents in other words. But it is much more likely that parents spread the virus to their children, he said. The age group 12 to 18 plays a much bigger role in spreading the virus.

These figures date from before the B117 strain gained ground in the Netherlands, but according to Van Dissel, the more contagious United Kingdom variant doesn't change the figures much. "You can see from other data that the transmission seems to take place a bit easier, so that the mutation is more contagious, but at the same time we see that the relationship between children and parents is not significantly affected."

Most infections still happen at home and the virus is most often introduced into a household when people visit each other, he said.