KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

On­ly three or four in­di­vid­u­als will be al­lowed in a class­room for this year's sit­tings of the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions (CAPE) and the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ex­am­i­na­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions.
At yes­ter­day's Min­istry of Health COVID-19 up­date, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said this was one of the pro­to­cols they were look­ing at im­ple­ment­ing as the min­istry con­tin­ues to work with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to pre­vent any spread of the virus dur­ing ex­am­i­na­tions, which are sched­uled to be­gin on Ju­ly 13.

"It is more dif­fi­cult for chil­dren to so­cial dis­tance than an adult in most in­stances. In a class­room set­ting, we are speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly about the ex­ams go­ing ahead in Ju­ly. The Min­istry of Health will be work­ing di­rect­ly with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to work out pro­to­cols to en­sure that there is so­cial dis­tance," Paras­ram said.

"For in­stance, in one class­room, there maybe three or four in­di­vid­u­als in the en­tire class­room. Of course, when school opens, that can­not be the case. We are look­ing at 20-30 per­sons in a small class­room, so so­cial dis­tance is ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult in that sort of set­ting.

"We have seen in oth­er coun­tries around the world, ex­ams be­ing con­duct­ed on a play­field. I saw a pic­ture where South Ko­rea ac­tu­al­ly used a large play­field to con­duct their ex­am­i­na­tion, which is open-air and they have a lot of so­cial dis­tance oc­cur­ring in there. We are us­ing class­rooms but we are try­ing to have three or four per­sons in those set­tings so that the so­cial dis­tance can be ad­hered to." Paras­ram said.
Hand­wash­ing, sani­ti­sa­tion of the sur­faces be­fore and af­ter each ex­am­i­na­tion and every time a new in­di­vid­ual comes in­to a space will be done. Most im­por­tant was that any­one who is ill will not be al­lowed in­to the ex­am­i­na­tion area.
The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is al­so ex­pect­ed to an­nounce its plans for pri­ma­ry school pupils to write the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment lat­er this week.
Al­so asked about su­per­mar­kets re­turn­ing to pre-COVID-19 op­er­at­ing hours yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said that will be ad­dressed in the next cy­cle of Gov­ern­ment's phased re­open­ing of the econ­o­my.

Paras­ram said guide­lines for the op­er­a­tion of re­li­gious fa­cil­i­ties were al­so al­ready draft­ed. Once signed by Deyals­ingh, the guide­lines will be sent to the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tions and avail­able on the min­istry's Face­book page ahead of Thurs­day's go-ahead.