Dr Emma Watts 2020-04-11 Person 5 5 0

I am a private teacher with contact with a large number of students of all ages and their families, traditionally working together for long periods within 2 metres and using shared spaces and surfaces. I became concerned about the potential for my classes - and the additional patterns of contact between students even if I were careful myself - to create chains of transmission for coronavirus. I started to research what to do in February. The advice from government, and from doctors I spoke with, was to go about as normal and make no changes. At the beginning of March I nonetheless made some tentative changes, making my living room “deep cleanable” in case we had a positive case in the student community, and I considered creating a mandatory separate place for parents and siblings to wait during classes - a big change when they were used to being present during classes. Emma is part of our community, and she immediately, politely, gently and firmly told me that this was not enough. It was time to only have students in the house, asking parents and siblings to go elsewhere during class, cleaning between students, and teaching from 2 metres distance as much as possible. As this was something of a shock, and a huge change to ask of my student community, with the potential to affect why parents would continue to choose me as their teacher, as well as needing to alter the emphasis of the routines between classes, and ensuring that young children would be able to work effectively without me and a parent at their side during class, I checked again with the government guidelines and other doctors. Again the advice was to carry on as normal. Rather than doing that, I felt able to approach Emma again at a clearly very busy time for her own practice, to discuss what to do. In her spare time Emma calmly supported her advice with scientific advice for me to read, and I swiftly decided that protecting my student community, society and the NHS had become more important than any impact on my teaching, and I decided to take Emma’s advice. On the 5th March I wrote to the students to reduce footfall in the house and no longer have parents or siblings in, implementing meticulous cleaning of shared areas and of everything students touched, and maintaining 2 metres distance in class. Emma took the time to review my proposed protocols to check that I was doing everything possible to create a safe environment and implement contagion control measures. In the BBC reporting on lockdown yesterday it was observed that many of today’s cases of covid death will be sadly stemming from infection chains created in the period before lockdown, and some of those deaths we have already seen stem from infection prior to the dates when I implemented social distancing and cleaning measures in consultation with Emma. Surrey was where one of the first cases was found, and London has been greatly affected. Many of my student community commute to London. Without Emma, even if I had still acted before lockdown, there would have been precious days of indecision and compliance with other official advice in which my entire student network and their extended networks could have become part of a chain of transmission, with untold consequences. It has now been 25 days since my students were taught in real life before moving classes online (also a step taken early in consultation with Emma) and 37 days since early implementation of social distancing in my student community. I am completely convinced that the measures we took so early to protect them when they were having classes before lockdown contributed to the fact that my student community are well today. I believe that Emma’s action in fearlessly and rationally advising me not only saved lives in the general sense of flattening the curve and slowing transmission, but in the specific sense of saving some of our lives by preventing the infection reaching me and preventing chains of transmission in my student community at a critical time. Emma has also ensured that we are well-prepared for dealing safely with future lifting of restrictions because we already worked out and practiced new protocols. I am deeply grateful.