Grandparents have been warned that hugging and kissing their grandchildren after school isn't the 'most sensible thing to do'.
The message - from Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and a member of Sage - comes after thousands of children in England and Wales returned to the classroom this week - some for the first time in six months.
Professor Viner says that 'being sensible' and 'relatively secure' is key for people who have spend the majority of the pandemic shielding.
During a Royal Society of Medicine webinar, he said: "I think if there are highly vulnerable clinically shielding grandparents and others, that actually full-on hugging and kissing your grandchildren after they come back from school may not be the most sensible way to behave.
"We don't believe in cutting off all physical contact between children and grandparents, but actually a lot of kissing and that kind of thing might not be the most sensible thing to do."
Prof Viner added: "Keeping children seeing grandparents is important, making sure they wash their hands etc when they come out of school. Being sensible, being relatively secure, I think is the way forward.”
Asked about the risks of children returning from school, then seeing their grandparents, Professor Viner said: "I very much understand the anxiety and particularly from families where grandparents or parents are clinically vulnerable and they have been shielding.
"This is also a particular issue I know for lots of multi-generational families from the BAME heritage.
"Clearly children can be asymptomatic, children can be infectious, clearly they can carry risk for adults, there is no pretence that they do not. The truth is that appears to be one of the least common ways that adults get infected."
