Thursday, 28 October 2021

 Mr HODGETT (Croydon) (09:44): I rise to talk about the lack of a solution to the constant closure of schools and the yo-yoing of students in and out of remote learning due to the presence of a student who tests positive to COVID. Students who are close contacts are still required to isolate for seven days, or 14 days if they are in primary school. Planning to trial rapid antigen testing or implementing a trial are not solutions. Rapid antigen testing is not new news. Internationally RAT has been widely used to keep students who are close contacts of a positive case in school, and after 160 days of missed face-to-face learning what our kids need is a plan to keep them at school. They need a plan—and that is not a plan to trial or a trial.

We are a highly vaccinated state now at 91.07 per cent single dosed and 76.9 per cent double dosed. Restrictions will be dramatically eased this weekend, yet students are highly burdened and penalised. Currently our 12 to 15-year-old students are at 79.1 per cent single-dose vaccinated and our 16 to 19-year-olds are at 86.44 per cent, and this for a disease that is mild in children. Victoria has passed Denmark in the percentage of total population aged nought-plus to be vaccinated, at 77.19 per cent. In Denmark they allow close contacts of positive cases to remain at school with routine testing—no school closures and unnecessary deep cleans, just a positive case is excluded and close contacts at school are frequently tested. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to look at our outstanding vaccination rates and implement RAT to keep the bulk of our students at school for the remainder of 2021 and all year in 2022.