Children in secondary schools in England will be told to wear face coverings when they return after the Christmas holiday next week to tackle a surge in cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, Reuters quotes Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi as saying.
“We want to maximise the number of children in school and college for the maximum amount of time,” he said in an article in the Sunday Telegraph.
“One of the additional, temporary measures that will help achieve this in light of the omicron surge is recommending face coverings are worn in secondary school classrooms and teaching spaces for the coming weeks although not for longer than they are needed.”
England was the only one of the four UK nations where face coverings were not previously recommended in the classroom.
