Children not showing symptoms of Covid should stay at school, says Oxford professor

On the latest Planet Normal podcast, Professor Carl Heneghan tells listeners why it may be time to stop mass testing schoolchildren

Director of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and NHS urgent care doctor Professor Carl Heneghan is the latest guest on The Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast, featuring news and views from beyond the bubble with columnists Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan
Director of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and NHS urgent care doctor Professor Carl Heneghan is the latest guest on The Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast, featuring news and views from beyond the bubble with columnists Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan

For Professor Carl Heneghan, Director of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, a spike in cases within a few weeks of children returning to school is inevitable: “If we hold our nerve, that won’t be a problem. If we panic and introduce restrictions again, cases will flatten for a bit, but then we’ll be in the same old pickle as before.”

Speaking to Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan’s weekly Planet Normal podcast, which you can listen to using the audio player above, Heneghan says mass testing creates an “ongoing problem”. According to the physician, disrupting children’s education via a system of mass Covid testing prevents them being exposed to other infections, which is damaging to their health. “We're interfering with the normal processes of our immune system, particularly as young people coming to adolescence and adulthood," he tells the podcast. "In doing that, what you're seeing in other countries, as soon as you re-emerge, you get surges of other infections.”

The solution, Professor Heneghan argues, is to stop telling non-symptomatic children to stay home: “The one policy I would enact is if you are symptomatic, you stay off school. Once you're back to normal, you go back to school. And if you had that policy, it'd be much more sensible for dealing with the pandemic.”


Listen to Planet Normal, a weekly Telegraph podcast featuring news and views from beyond the bubble, using the audio player above or subscribe for free here, on Apple PodcastsSpotify or your preferred podcast app.

Join Allison Pearson to discuss mass testing of children and the latest Planet Normal episode in the comments section of this article at 11am on Thursday 2 September.
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