Prof Whitty said scientists were trying to assess the impact opening schools would have on the coronavirus infection rate – the R value.
He said: “If you have schools open, it does contribute to increasing the R. If you close schools, the R goes down, it was part of the collection of things that were done in March to try and pull the R from where it was, near three, to where it is now, below one.”
He added: “If you stopped doing it, you would actually lose some of the benefit that we have currently got.”
“What we are trying to work out is what proportion of the R it contributes and therefore, if children went back to school, how much closer to one – and that’s in a bad way – would we be and could it even tip us above one.”
– Target of 25,000 tests per day remains
Mr Hancock said the Government is still aiming to conduct 250,000 tests a day – including antibody tests.
“We want testing to continue to increase. As you will know, the Prime Minister set a goal of 250,000 some time ago – especially for when the antibody tests come on stream.
“But, so far, there isn’t one of those that is clinically valid.”
