Management Information Sheet

NCC Coronavirus (COVID-19) Health, Safety and Wellbeing web page

Please remember that the Health, Safety and Wellbeing web page has a wealth of tools and information to help you manage COVID-19 in your setting, these include the following.

The Management of cases guidance which has recently been updated to reflect updates to contingency planning.

We have updated how to manage risks for pregnant staff in our New and expectant mothers risk assessment for educational settings following a change in government guidelines.

Please also give further consideration to the control measures outlined in the compliance code for all education settings. We would encourage you to think critically about the control measures when planning events that result in increased mixing such as mock exams for year 11 pupils, or festive celebrations.

Vaccination - Second dose for healthy 16 to 17 year olds

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has advised that all healthy 16 to 17 year olds should be offered a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

The second vaccine dose should be given 12 weeks or more following the first vaccine dose, or 12 weeks following a positive COVID-19 test result - whichever is later. Please note 16 and 17 year olds will not be offered this vaccine dose through the schools programme, but through vaccination centres, community pharmacies and GP led primary care network sites. The national booking service will be available from Monday 22 November for 16 and 17 year olds to book their vaccine.

Please continue to promote the uptake of vaccination for those eligible in your setting.

Vaccination - First vaccine dose after a positive COVID-19 infection

UK Health Security Agency have recommended that young people aged 12-17 who are not in a high-risk group should wait 12 weeks after a positive COVID-19 infection before getting their first vaccine dose. This is a change from previous advice that vaccination should be deferred for around 4 weeks after confirmed infection. The School-aged immunisation service (SAIS) teams are already applying this change.

Any 12-17 year olds who have already received a vaccine within 12 weeks of having a COVID-19 infection is highly unlikely to feel a detrimental effect and should not be concerned. They should continue to follow the advice in the "what to expect after vaccination" leaflet received at the time of vaccination.

The DfE's CO2 monitor programme

CO2 monitors are being rolled out to state-funded education settings throughout the Autumn term.

When using your CO2 monitors please refer to the DfE 'How to' guidance on using CO2 monitors in education and childcare settings. This guidance details the spaces which are best suited to CO2 monitor use, and those spaces where CO2 monitoring is not recommended. Settings struggling with CO2 monitor use have told us that they found this guidance very useful.

We would also recommend reading the ventilation section of the compliance code for all education settings which contains useful information regarding ventilation and the use of CO2 monitors.

Air cleaning units

The DfE have noted that in the majority of settings, existing ventilation measures are sufficient. In the very few cases where an area of poor ventilation (sustained CO2 readings above 1500ppm) cannot be resolved through opening windows and doors or minor repair works, it may be appropriate to consider the use of an air cleaning unit.

The Department for Education (DfE) will make 1,000 DfE-funded air cleaning units available for poorly ventilated teaching spaces and staff rooms in SEND and Alternative Provision settings, including SEN units in mainstream settings. These settings have been prioritised due to the higher-than-average number of vulnerable pupils. Further information on the eligibility criteria and application process will be shared by the DfE next week.

Further information regarding an online 'marketplace' for purchasing air cleaning units will be available from early-December if your setting is not eligible for a DfE-funded unit.

Contingency planning for Supervised Self-test Onsite (SSO)

Contingency plans list measures that settings may be advised to introduce by Outbreak Management Centre (OMC), the Director of Public Health (DPH) or DfE helpline, and settings should have pre-planned how they would introduce them if recommended to do so by OMC, DPH or DfE helpline.

Please revisit your contingency plans to ensure you are prepared to introduce the following if recommended to do so.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Department for Education (DfE) have developed a new Supervised Self-test Onsite (SSO) model of asymptomatic testing for use in schools and colleges. SSO is a 'hybrid' model of testing that will allow schools and colleges to provide onsite testing without the logistics and staffing requirements of a full Asymptomatic Test Site (ATS). Under this new model, pupils/students will use their own self-test kits to swab and process the tests themselves onsite, and trained staff will read and report the results. Please make sure you are familiar with the DfE 'How to' Guide for Supervised Self-Testing Onsite (SSO) guidance, some highlights include:

• Only secondary age pupils and students (aged 11+) should be tested.
• SSO is intended to help schools reduce the transmission of the virus. It could be deployed to help manage an outbreak.
• SSO should only be deployed following prior discussion and agreement with your local Director of Public Health (DPH) via the Outbreak Management Centre (OMC).
• Supervised self-testing is an outbreak management tool and can be used as appropriate within your setting in response to an outbreak of Covid 19. This may, for example, mean that a class, a year group or any other specified cohort (e.g. a hockey team) is offered SSO.
• Testing the entire pupil / student population should only be undertaken in exceptional circumstances and agreed with your local authority and DPH.
• Settings should agree with their DPH the most appropriate way to implement the model and how they wish to spread the testing e.g. two tests per week for two weeks, one test per week for four weeks. Where only one test is done on-site, the second test should be done at home to ensure that twice-weekly testing continues.
• If consent to ATS testing has been provided previously then new consent is not required.
• You should not use ATS test kits to undertake SSO testing. This is because ATS kits are not supplied with individual extraction tubes and liquid, and therefore pupils / students would not be able to process their own tests without further assistance and additional equipment.
• When registering the test kit and recording the result, do not scan the QR code on the test kit cartridge. All schools and colleges were provided with a delivery of barcodes to undertake ATS testing in September, and these are to be used as per guidance when recording the results of the tests.

Our NCC contingency planning guidance will be updated in due course to include the above approach.