Peterborough school ‘monitoring coronavirus situation’ ahead of planned Italy ski trip

Ormiston Bushfield Academy in Ortongate said pupils and staff are scheduled to travel to an area “approximately 200 miles away” from the regions currently in quarantine, but that it will hold off on making a final decision on the trip as the outbreak continues to spread.

A call on whether to go ahead with the trip will be made in the coming weeks with the academy saying it will keep pupils and parents regularly updated.

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So far Italy has 400 cases of coronavirus and 12 people have died there since the outbreak began.

Eleven towns and villages in Lombardy, the region around Milan, and Veneto, which includes Venice, are in a quarantined red zone, home to a total of 55,000 people.

Schools across the UK, including at Lime Academy Watergall in Bretton, Peterborough, have closed recently due to pupils or staff visiting northern Italy during half term, although others have remained open after following advice from Public Health England.

Bretton Community Pre-School, Lutton St Nicholas Primary School and Gedney Church End Primary School - the latter two in the Spalding area - have also closed as precautionary measures, although Lutton and Gedney have both re-opened after deep cleans.

A spokesperson for Ormiston Bushfield Academy, which is run by the Ormiston Academies Trust, said: “We currently have a ski trip scheduled for April which is to an area of Italy which is approximately 200 miles away from the regions which are currently in quarantine.

“We take our duty of care to students, staff and our wider school community extremely seriously, however, and so we are continuing to closely monitor the international situation.

“We will be closely following government guidance in the coming weeks before confirming whether the trip will go ahead as planned and we will be keeping students and parents regularly updated with developments.”

There are now 19 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK, while a British man who was on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan has died from the virus.

He is the first British man to have died after being infected.