606 school classes in Vienna currently in quarantine

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This week, there were about 1,100 positive PCR tests at schools in Austria. For Vienna alone, that meant 606 classes at 525 schools had to be closed and students quarantined.
This week, 1,121 corona cases were detected during PCR testing at schools. Through the Ministry of Education’s “Everything Flushes” program, which is conducted at elementary schools in Vienna and in other provinces at all ages, there were 530 cases. In the “Alles gurgelt” program, through which all students from the fifth grade are tested in Vienna, 591 tests have struck, as Education City Councilor Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS) announced Friday.

149 positive tests in Viennese elementary schools
Specifically, there were 149 positive results this week in “Alles Spült” at Vienna’s elementary schools. In Upper Austria there were 140, in Lower Austria 77, in Styria 50, in Salzburg 44, in Tyrol 32, in Carinthia 19, in Burgenland 13, and in Vorarlberg six (in each case across all school types). In total, 530 of around 818,000 tests were positive, which corresponds to 0.06 percent.

Across “”Alles Spült”, 226,289 PCR tests were conducted from Monday to Thursday among ten- to 19-year-olds, according to the office of Education City Councilor Wiederkehr, of which 0.45 percent turned out positive. By comparison, a total of 0.4 percent of tests were positive in Vienna, according to the Traffic Light Commission. “The number of positive students and teachers roughly reflects the incidence of infection in the population as a whole,” Wiederkehr commented on the figures. By contrast, the positivity rate for “Everything Flushes” in Vienna’s elementary schools was 0.12 percent.

More infections with “Alles gurgelt” – The Ministry of Education still wants to get to the bottom of the different positivity rates in the PCR tests from Vienna (“Alles gurgelt”: 0.45; “Alles spült”: 0.12). On the one hand, different CT thresholds could have been set for the tests, above which a student is designated as positive. On the other hand, for technical reasons, “Alles spült” could also report students in the school PCR counts who performed a PCR away from school, for example because they showed symptoms.

Only five more days of quarantine
In any case, Wiederkehr stressed that the goal remains to use PCR testing to identify infected students as well as teachers early on and break chains of infection. “The reduced quarantine period to five days will also provide relief for children currently in quarantine. The goal continues to be to keep schools open.”

606 classes closed in Vienna
As of Friday, 606 classes at 525 schools were closed in Vienna, according to the office of Health Councillor Peter Hacker (SPÖ); in Lower Austria, 101 classes were closed on Friday, as well as two classes Salzburg and one in Burgenland, according to the Education Ministry. Closed sites continue to be none. For comparison, at the end of April, when there was a similarly high Siebes day incidence as currently, twelve schools nationwide were completely closed due to clustered corona cases.