Schools in Northern Ireland must come back after the extended half term break and they must stay back

Some departments in some hospitals in Northern Ireland are nearing capacity.

Shoppers are shopping less in the Province than in any other part of the UK, a retail survey finds.

Elsewhere, cases are rising a ‘brutal’ rate in France.

Most people, including many people in authority, feel conflicted as to the best response. On the one hand they want restrictions on human interactions to try to halt the virus, on the other hand they want life to go on as much as possible.

At the weekend it seemed a split was emerging at Stormont over school closures. The Sinn Fein minister Caral Ni Chuilin said the R (reproduction) number would “ideally” be below one before pupils return. This raised the prospect of pupils being home for weeks but the DUP vowed to resist that.

The party is right to take that stance, but its position was expected. In a more significant intervention, the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools has said schools should not delay a return after November. They expressed concern about “the impact on our children and young people and the longer-term effects that this crisis” has on pupils.

In an alarming sequence in March, some Catholic schools closed before the date set by Department of Education.

All schools in the UK were closed too early for Easter and opened far too late. There is solid evidence that children, particularly pre secondary age, do not easily transmit the virus to adults and rarely suffer badly themselves if infected.

There are also increasingly vocal experts in children who list the damage caused by shut schools. Yet outside this newspaper, there was no push to get class back before summer.

Pupils have lost a swathe of their education due to a failure to weigh the balance of risks. It led to particular suffering and unfairness for exam year pupils.

Now they have lost yet another week. The schools must come back after half term, and stay back.

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