Ireland needs to reduce the positivity rate of COVID-19 below 5% before schools can reopen in the long-term, according to a public health expert.
Professor Devi Sridhar, Chair of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University, said the rate of 10.3% here in the last seven days is "quite high".
This metric tracks the percentage of coronavirus tests which come back positive.
The Taoiseach said yesterday that the Government's priority is getting children with special educational needs back into classrooms.
Micheál Martin expressed concern that the levels of transmission are very high in society, and said he is looking at a "phased reopening" of schools over time.
Speaking to On The Record with Gavan Reilly, Professor Sridhar also advocated for the gradual return of children to schools.
She said the reopenings should be phased, beginning with younger age groups in preschools and primary schools, followed by secondary schools and universities.
Professor Sridhar explained: "What we know so far, and this is for the old variant, is that the younger the child, the less they seem to transmit.
"The number of outbreaks you have and the number of transmission events seems to increase with age.
"It's not a binary, do they transmit or do they not, it's the extent to which they transmit, but from our experience in Scotland, we have seen very few outbreaks in primaries and preschools."
Teenagers are like "mini-adults" in that they seem to transmit similarly to the way adults do, she added, with "more transmission events" being reported in secondary schools and universities.
Because of this, she believes a testing system should be brought in for Leaving Cert students and options for where exams can take place, rather than in halls with poor ventilation, should be considered.
Photo: Leah Farrell/Rollingnews.ieBalance
"We need to have balance, if you really wanted to reduce transmission you would just lock everyone up in their homes and do nothing," Professor Sridhar said.
"So I think we have to find how do we open up a knot of the necessary, essential things we need to run in society while also suppressing COVID to the lowest possible levels and that's the balance we need to strike."
The public health expert said the reopening of schools should be "a slow progression up the age-grade" while at each stage, ensuring community prevalence of the virus is low.
She said: "Because what we've seen is if there is a lot of cases in the community, they'll keep appearing in schools and because of our test and trace system, those bubbles of children who are exposed will be sent home.
"So that's not really sustainable education if you keep having cases and bubbles of 30 or 40 children being sent home.
"You should really squash your community prevalence, get it super low and then a lot of your schools won't have cases at all and can run normally.
Professor Sridhar believes the debate of whether "schools are safe" is "a bit off-topic" as the question is about balancing the benefits of education with risk to teachers and families.
She added that she hasn't seen any evidence that the new variants of COVID-19 are more transmissible in children.
"When people ask me should I send my children to school, I say well look at the rates per 100,000 where you're living, look at how many contacts your child will have in school each day, and then look at your risk as a family of how bad it would be to have COVID-19," she said.
"It's easy to open schools but it's hard to keep them open."
Schools can't run normally if there is high community transmission as this leads to an unstable education system, she stated.
"There's no point sending your child in if you get a phone call the next day that 30 kids have been sent home for two weeks.
"We should be looking at how many kids we can get back to education sustainable and the way to do that, there's no way around getting your numbers low."
Positivity rate
Professor Sridhar said we should focus on the positivity rate, rather than transmission rates, in assessing whether schools should reopen.
She added: "For me, you need to get your positivity rate under 5%."
On Ireland's positivity rate, which is 10.3% in the past week, she said: "It is quite high, that would say to me, spend another week or two trying to get those numbers lower and then get kids back more sustainably.
"What you don't want to have is this yo-yoing when your open schools and then two weeks later you have to close them.
She advised that Ireland needs to have a comprehensive plan about how the virus will be dealt with in the long-term by looking ahead to the next six to eight months.
