As millions of children gear up for a return to school, Italy has updated its quarantine rules in its latest set of anti-Covid measures.

The Italian government issued a new decree on Wednesday evening that contains new Covid restrictions aimed at limiting infection rates among schoolchildren while keeping remote learning as a last resort.

In 2022, Italy’s education ministry is hoping that distance learning, or ‘DAD‘ (‘didattica a distanza’), can be kept to a minimum – but a continued surge in the country’s infection rates threatens to disrupt in-person teaching.

Italy has seen record highs in its Covid infection rates in recent days, with 189,000 new cases registered on Wednesday.

A significant proportion of infections are driven by children, many of whom are either too young to get vaccinated or are still waiting to receive their shot, as the European Medicines Agency only approved the Pfizer Cominarty vaccine for use in five to 11-year-olds in late November.

One previously discussed containment measure was the introduction of a significant delay in school reopenings.

Vincenzo De Luca, the governor of Campania, had called for the return to the classroom to be postponed by 20-30 days to “cool down the contagion peak” and to “develop the largest possible vaccination campaign for the student population,” Sky Tg24 news reported.

That proposal ultimately appears to have been discarded, however, as education minister Patrizio Bianchi maintained his position that it is “fundamental to protect teaching in the classroom”.

With most schools set to reopen as planned between January 7th and January 10th, the government hopes its new regulations will allow in-person learning to go on uninterrupted for the majority of students.

The school quarantine rules contained in the new decree consist of a combination of the use of high-grade FFP2 masks in classrooms where one case has been detected, as well as mixed integrated remote and in-person teaching in classes that have had more than one case, with a student’s continued presence in school dependant on their having been recently vaccinated or boosted.

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https://www.thelocal.it/20220106/back-to-school-what-are-italys-new-covid-restrictions-in-classrooms/