Despite Norway experiencing its worst-ever wave of Covid and imposing a slew of new restrictions — including a ban on the sale of alcohol at bars and restaurants — Norwegian schools will remain, as they have throughout the pandemic, mask-optional environments for the Scandinavian country’s children.
As winter looms, coronavirus cases are rising on both sides of the North Atlantic, even in highly vaccinated Western European countries. …
Following over 18 months of catastrophic school closures, most American children are finally back in their classrooms. But, with cases surging in Europe, there may soon be calls from the usual suspects to shutter schools as a non-pharmaceutical intervention — despite significant evidence doing so will hurt children and not…
From Monday, October 11th, primary school children in the majority of France’s departments — 68 of them — won’t have to mask. These are departments where the transmission rate has been below 50/100,000 for 5 consecutive days. …
In mid-August, I wrote about how many European countries would not be masking children during the upcoming school year. A month later, I documented how many European countries were modifying quarantine and testing strategies, such as implementing “test to stay.” …
The Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has endorsed the “test to stay” strategy — a coronavirus testing policy where asymptomatic close contacts can escape quarantine if they repeatedly test negative — in its latest Rapid Risk Assessment report on the state of the pandemic in the…
Given the complicated politics of mask mandates in the United States, Americans might be surprised to learn that, in French nursery schools serving children under six, children are not allowed to mask. No, it’s not that mask mandates are banned, but that masks themselves are prohibited.
While many students across the United States have suffered catastrophic learning loss during the coronavirus pandemic, new research from Sweden — a country that controversially never closed its primary or lower secondary schools — suggests young Swedes have fared quite a bit better.
Researchers from Linnaeus University and Karolinska Institutet…
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg announced today that normal life is back for Norwegians starting tomorrow afternoon. Almost all restrictions impacting daily life will end.
“Now we can live almost as we did before the pandemic hit us. I do not think everything will be as before. I think the…
Earlier this month, Danish health officials announced that Covid-19 is no longer “a socially critical disease” and lifted almost all restrictions, including a mask mandate for public transit.
More than 80% of people above the age of 12 in the Scandinavian country have had the two shots, leading the Danish…
