Schools should remain open “at all costs” despite being linked to most major Covid outbreaks, says the health minister. Adam Niedzielski also warned that Poland could soon see up to 40,000 daily new cases, which would be the country’s highest ever figures.
“We see that the dominant number of outbreaks, when it comes to the activities of the sanitary inspectorate, are [in] schools,” Niedzielski told Polsat News. “But this does not change our view that schools must be open at all costs.”
This, he explained, is because remote learning causes many problems, including having a negative impact on children’s mental health. Lockdowns also create “very large-scale disruption”, the minister added.
When asked whether the government would introduce new restrictions, Niedzielski said that the current focus was on enforcement of existing rules rather than “adding further empty regulations that will not be complied with”. Last week the minister met with police to discuss tougher implementation of masking requirements.
In a separate interview with Fakt today, Niedzielski said that the peak of the current fourth wave of the virus in Poland will come at the turn of November and December. At that point, the daily number of new COVID-19 cases could reach “up to 40,000”, he said.
Were that to happen, it would mark the highest ever figures in Poland. The current record is the 35,000 new cases reported on 1 April this year, amid the country’s third wave.
However, while infections are currently growing rapidly – with figures roughly doubling week by week – Niedzielski noted that they remain lower than at the same point a year ago. The current weekly rolling average of daily infections is around 7,500. On 2 November last year it was almost 19,000.
In August, ahead of the predicted fourth wave, Niedzielski outlined a traffic-light system of local restrictions that would be introduced in the autumn based on local infection and vaccination rates. However, although some areas have already passed the threshold to qualify, no new restrictions have yet been introduced.
In his remarks to Fakt today, the health minister again confirmed that the government does not see the need to introduce new restrictions “in the foreseeable future of the next two-three weeks”. But that could change if there is “an even greater acceleration of infections, and thus hospitalisations”.
Main image credit: Krystian Maj/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
