Answering concerns regarding Covid-19

Message from our school doctor, Leonard van den Broek, GGD Kennemerland
As your school doctor, I am available to answer your questions regarding your children’s’ heath matters.  Considering the recent Covid-19 crisis, I have complied some information that I hope you will find useful and will ease some of your concerns.

Testing children

The GGD is currently receiving a lot of calls from parents who want their child with (mild) complaints to be tested for COVID-19. The national message is that anyone with complaints can be tested, but for children aged 0-12, these are only tested on indication. There are several reasons for this.

  • Children usually find the current test (throat and nose smear) very unpleasant.
  • Resistance during test administration may prevent the test from being performed properly with the risk of false negative results.
  • There is also a logistics problem, because very young children cannot currently be tested in our test street.
  • In addition, children often have few complaints of COVID-19, so it is important to always weigh the importance of the test against the interest of the child.

 

The advice at this time is therefore to exclude children aged 0-12 with complaints appropriate to COVID-19 from school and nursery and to have them sick at home, but not to test them as standard.

A test indication only exists if:

  • There is an unusual number of children (namely 3 or more) in primary school or childcare with recently arisen complaints appropriate to COVID-19 (Article 26 WPG).
  • If a child with complaints of COVID-19 is in contact with a confirmed patient.
  • If a child with complaints of COVID-19 has been absent from school for more than a week, a test can be considered.
  • If a child has chronic complaints that resemble COVID-19 and where the assessing (JGZ) doctor has doubts about the cause.

 

To clarify the latter category: children with chronic cold complaints do not have to be tested as standard. Only if there is doubt about the cause, can it be decided in consultation with the parents and the (treating) doctor to test.


Contact GGD Kennemerland

If you have any questions about testing children, you can contact the Department of Infectious Disease Control at GGD Kennemerland: IZB@vrk.nl

For questions about hygiene and the guidelines, please contact: THZorg@vrk.nl

I am always available for your questions via my email address: lvandenbroek@ggdkennemerland.nl

Leonard van der Broek, GGD Kennemerland