It remains unclear when Victorian students in grades three to six will be able to scrap the face coverings in the classroom and fall back into line with their secondary counterparts, who aren’t required to wear masks at all.Senior Andrews government Minister Jacinta Allan on Friday defended the mandate as playing a crucial role to keep kids at school.“The requirement for primary school age students to wear masks is based on the advice from our health officials and is part of a suite of measures that are about keeping our schools safe and open,” she said.“My kids are in primary school and they head off each morning wearing their masks to school, understanding that it’s just part of what we need to do right now.”Asked if enough was being done to factor in the concerns of child behavioural experts, who have warned the prolonged use of masks in education settings had “deprived” children of meeting learning outcomes and developing socially, Ms Allan said: “All of these things are, of course, assessed.”She added: “One of the most important parts of a student’s learning is to keep schools open … This has all been so successful over Term 1 (and) after two years of disrupted learning, that’s a fabulous learning outcome for students in those schools.”Opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier blasted the ongoing mandate as “madness” and “illogical”. “We’ve been very consistent on this – they don’t need to be wearing masks in school and they shouldn’t have to be,” she said.“It makes no sense and when you have leading experts like Dr Nick Coatsworth speaking out saying it shouldn’t happen … the Andrews government needs to be listening to the health experts.“It is just madness. It is illogical, and quite frankly, why is there this push from the Andrews government to divide these kids in a classroom like that?”Experts say school mask mandate must lift nowAn ongoing mandate to keep primary school students masked in classrooms is restricting learning and must now be wound back, several leading epidemiologists and paediatric experts say. Victorian students in grades three to six are still required to don the face coverings, while their secondary counterparts don’t need to mask up.Child behavioural experts warned the prolonged use of masks had “deprived” children of meeting learning outcomes and developing socially. Director of the Child and Adolescent Health PhD Program at University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Fiona Russell, who recently chaired a World Health Organisation and Unicef guideline group on kids wearing masks, told the Herald Sun she feared the implications of ongoing mandates. “There certainly needs to be an off ramp for mask use in primary school settings,” she said.“Public health measures on children should not be any more than adults.“I don’t know what message this gives to children – they’re masked but their parents aren’t. If everyone’s wearing masks it sends a signal ‘we’re in it together’ but if you’re the only one doing it, it gives the message that you’re the problem and school is potentially dangerous. “Kids spend about 30 hours at school but the rest of the time they’re at home or out in the community doing what they do – and they’re not wearing masks. “Infections occur in schools but they also occur in every other setting children and families attend.”Australia’s former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth, an infectious diseases physician, also said there was no justification to keep them mandatory in schools. “I think the people who advocate for masks really act to de-emphasise the costs of wearing a mask for a child, and they overemphasise the benefits it has on the community,” he said. “For reasons that I don’t know, because I can’t read his mind, (chief health officer) Brett Sutton is one of those people. The impression that ongoing mask wearing gives is an exaggeration of the risk of Covid to our community now.” The verdict from expertsBoth Professors Russell and Coatsworth said the argument to keep kids masked might be valid if the virus caused high mortality in that age group, or if there was no vaccine protection. “To mandate something would require high quality evidence to show the intervention is working but the existing evidence is low quality. It’s incredibly important that the government starts to do high quality research in this field,” Prof Russell said. No other Australian state — except for Western Australia which requires everyone aged over eight to wear masks indoors — mandates primary school face coverings. Some states still require secondary school kids to, however. Professor Russell said the risk of kids getting seriously ill from Covid was low.“About three per 100,000 children will end up hospitalised — and we do encourage parents to get their children vaccinated.”Paediatric infectious diseases physician Robert Booy said more than half of primary school children were vaccinated while most had some level of immunity.“We need to get the masks out of schools as soon as possible. We need to stop impeding on their education,” he said.Deakin University chair of epidemiology Catherine Bennett added: “Demanding people to wear masks — particularly young kids when it does impact their learning — is hard to explain when you’re not imposing it for other workplaces. Having a different set of rules for a small part of our community is not justified”.Professor Bennett said giving kids relief from masks now was important in the context that face coverings could be reintroduced in more widespread settings during winter or in the event of new variants.Paediatric psychologist Deirdre Brandner said learning, communication, socialisation and emotional regulation — the basis of a child’s experience in the classroom — were being negatively impacted by the prolonged wearing of masks.“The concern is that some children have now had many weeks attempting to engage in learning and social interactions with the impairment of masks,” she said.“We are depriving children of one of the key tools of communication — both receptive and expressive.”Moran Dvir from the Shadow Pandemic lobby group which represents more than 20,000 parents, teachers and healthcare professionals, said they “vehemently opposed” the ongoing mandate.“As parents, we trust the medical advice for our children from doctors and paediatric health experts — not public health bureaucrats and politicians,” she said. “The breathtaking arrogance of this government in ignoring the expert advice of professors and paediatricians that children shouldn’t be masked is only matched by Daniel Andrews’ unabashed admission of using the mandate to pressure more parents to vaccinate their children. This is unconscionable.” Several other leading epidemiologists told the Herald Sun that lifting the mask mandate was unlikely to lead to a spike in hospitalisations, despite the Omicron BA. 2 variant being well established across the community.Hassan Vally, associate professor of epidemiology at Deakin University said: “It feels wrong to be asking children to wear mask and take on more restrictions than the rest of the community”.Nathan Grills, public health physician at the University of Melbourne added: “It does seem that making young people wear masks is no longer proportionate”, while Australian National University infectious disease expert Peter Collignon said “it’s really inconsistent”.Former World Health Organisation epidemiologist Adrian Esterman said he believed masks should remain part of everyday life, at least until the endemic phase is reached.But he said “you could argue that face masks aren’t so important” iunf twice-weekly rapid testing in schools was continued.“It simply makes no sense to choose one age cohort,” he said.A state government spokesman said masks were “one of the simplest but most effective ways” to reduce the spread of Coivd.“We need to have the right protections in place for kids, including simple things like keeping masks on at school,” he said. “While masks are one tool, we know the best way to stop the spread of Covid this winter is by parents getting their kids vaccinated.”
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