Abbey Collins, a HSE public health consultant, said isolating a whole class or school can be counter-productive, as well as harmful and disruptive to students’ education.
It comes as a report found that lockdown restrictions have had significantly adverse consequences for children’s education.
Measured approach
HSE chief executive Paul Reid told a briefing that primary schoolchildren and children with additional learning needs have been most affected.
Dr Collins said that if a positive Covid-19 test is detected in a school, public health authorities would adopt a “measured approach”.
“If a child who has been in class is diagnosed with Covid-19 I would not expect routinely to be calling all of that class a close contact and excluding a whole class. I hope it would be more measured than that,” she said.
“It would be based on the information we get from the case, the circumstances of the case and within the school.
“Our hope is that we would be more measured because the recommendations, plans and implementations within schools settings will hopefully facilitate that.
“If we deem there is genuine concern of onward spread and transmission within either a class or a broader setting in the school then we will act fast and hard on that as appropriate.”
Children with additional learning needs are disproportionately affected.
Speaking about the report, Mr Reid said: “It shows that primary school children are most affected because they were unable to participate in self-directed learning and that has issues and consequences and drives a need for more support and direction,” he said.
“Children with additional learning needs are disproportionately affected and anxiety levels for children may increase due to lack of socialisation and loss of routines.”
Mr Reid said that Ireland’s spike in Covid-19 cases is not a second surge but rather a “significant ramp-up” of cases.
He said the “biggest defence” is by following public health measures to avoid needing strict measures to be enforced locally, regionally or nationally.
The end-to-end turnaround time for tests last week was 2.2 days.
The number of HSE workers carrying out contact tracing will be trebled by the end of the week.
“That’s largely due to volume and due to more complex cases that we’re having to contact and thirdly because people have more contacts,” Mr Reid said.
He also acknowledged there have been issues with the Covid-19 Tracker App and that a large number of users have deleted it.
He said that while there had been 1.65 million downloads, there are about 1.2 million active users.
More than 300 people diagnosed with Covid-19 have uploaded their anonymous key to the app and almost 700 people using it have received a close-contact notification since the app was launched.
