Education, Health Ministries Maintain Schools are Not Source of COVID-19 Transmission

Luxembourg's Ministry of Education, Children and Youth and Ministry of Health have reiterated that schools are not a source of COVID-19 infections.

The ministries referred to Wednesday's press conference, during which the Minister of Health, Paulette Lenert, mentioned 33 COVID-19 "clusters", one-third of which were found in schools. Both the Education and the Health Ministries have recalled, however, that the notion of a cluster is not synonymous with source of infection.

More specifically, a cluster applies to a situation where three or more infections occur within the same community or following the same gathering in a period of seven days, even if the infection occurred outside this place. As an example, the ministries explained that, if three siblings who became infected during a family celebration attend the same school, that school is identified as a cluster, even if the children have not infected each other and if no other pupil or member of the staff were infected in this school.

The ministries also recalled that, apart from a few rare cases where doubt remains, no infection has passed through a school; to date, there is no evidence of transmission of coronavirus in the school context in Luxembourg.

An in-depth analysis of the impact of COVID-19 in schools will be the subject of a report to be drawn up by the two ministries.