A number of children have been forced to self-isolate after a pupil at one Wirral school tested positive for coronavirus.
A letter seen by the ECHO showed that a Year 11 pupil at Pensby High School was confirmed to have tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday.
The pupil was made to self-isolate for 14 days.
After talking to Public Health England and Wirral Council, the school decided that a “small number” of Year 11 children had been in contact with the infected pupil and would also have to self-isolate.
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Explaining the decision not to instruct the whole year group to self-isolate, Pensby High’s letter to parents read: “As students are separated, apart from the passing movement between lessons, I am as confident as I can be that only a small number of Year 11 students are directly impacted upon.”
The letter assured parents that “students who are not a close contact [of the infected pupil] are at minimal risk from this case”.
Several schools in Wirral have been hit by coronavirus since their full return earlier this month.
Woodchurch High School, Co-op Academy Bebington, Lingham Primary School and St John’s Catholic Junior School have all been affected.
It is understood that infections have also been confirmed at Ridgeway High School, Brackenwood Infant School and Bidston Village Primary School.
Cases are rocketing in the borough as a whole, with 258 infections confirmed between September 3 and September 9 at a rate of 80 per 100,000 residents.
That’s not far off the rate of 90 per 100,000 residents registered in Birmingham over the weekend, which led to a ban on people meeting those from other households in the city.
Along with the rest of Merseyside, Wirral is now on the government’s official coronavirus watch list.
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This means that the government is now closely monitoring the situation in Merseyside regarding infection rates and could soon impose new restrictions if cases continue to rise.
In a plea to avoid more restrictions in Wirral, Cllr Janette Williamson, the council’s cabinet member for finance, said: "We do not want a local lockdown. We know it affects the mental and physical wellbeing of our residents. We have seen the damage lockdown does to livelihoods and businesses.
“We can only avoid going back to that if people continue to play their part. We have a collective responsibility to keep ourselves and others well.”
