Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

While par­ents have com­plained about what they deem to be a “hush-hush” ap­proach em­ployed by prin­ci­pals when COVID-19 cas­es emerge in schools, the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry School Prin­ci­pals’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA) in­sists there’s no de­lib­er­ate ploy to cov­er up the cas­es. 

One par­ent, who be­lieves her Sec­ond-Year child con­tract­ed the dis­ease at his school in St Joseph, told Guardian Me­dia she in­formed the school of his pos­i­tive re­sult but af­ter three days, oth­er par­ents weren’t in­formed. She said it was on­ly when she reached out to oth­er par­ents of her son’s class that the school broke its si­lence. 

“We have a right to know be­cause our chil­dren’s lives are at stake and not on­ly them but you have chil­dren liv­ing with oth­er sib­lings, grand­par­ents and the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion has co­mor­bidi­ties, they are im­muno­com­pro­mised. With­in my house­hold we have co­mor­bidi­ties.”

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to NAPSPA pres­i­dent Car­lene Hayes, prin­ci­pals aren’t al­lowed to di­vulge that in­for­ma­tion to par­ents. 

“We un­der­stand that as prin­ci­pals, that par­ents will be scared but our role is ba­si­cal­ly to in­form and get the ad­vice from the ed­u­ca­tion health unit as we move for­ward,” Hayes said yes­ter­day. 

“We know it’s a try­ing time and par­ents would re­al­ly want prin­ci­pals to make that state­ment and let them know these cas­es in the school and the num­ber but our hands are tied.”

Al­though it may seem ob­vi­ous that stu­dents shar­ing a desk are pri­ma­ry con­tacts of con­firmed or sus­pect­ed cas­es, Hayes said prin­ci­pals don’t have the au­thor­i­ty or ju­ris­dic­tion to make that de­ter­mi­na­tion and or­der them in­to quar­an­tine. She said that au­thor­i­ty lies with the rel­e­vant Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Sur­veil­lance Units and Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cers of Health.

How­ev­er, she said there ap­pears to be a dis­par­i­ty in the ap­proach to treat­ing the cas­es in schools de­pend­ing on the dis­tricts.

“When we com­pare, some nurs­es will in­form schools that an en­tire class will go on quar­an­tine un­til chil­dren dis­play symp­toms and they go for test­ing and some will not do that. So it all de­pends on their (the EDHSU & CMOH) in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” she said. 

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s guide­lines for man­ag­ing COVID-19 cas­es in the pub­lic school sys­tem, prin­ci­pals don’t have a sub­stan­tial de­ci­sion-mak­ing role and func­tion more like a li­ai­son. The prin­ci­pal’s role is to alert rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, such as the school su­per­vi­sor, of the case and ex­e­cute in­struc­tions re­layed from se­nior Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion or Min­istry of Health of­fi­cials. In­struc­tions to close the school, dis­miss ear­ly, or tran­si­tion to on­line school are giv­en to the prin­ci­pal by the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer af­ter con­sul­ta­tions among the CMOH, di­rec­tor of school su­per­vi­sion (DSS), CMOH, Ed­u­ca­tion House Of­fi­cer and the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee on the mat­ter.

Pro­to­cols for han­dling a COVID-19 case in school

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Phase 4 Re­open­ing Guide­lines, avail­able on its web­site, sets out the pro­to­cols schools need to ac­ti­vate when a COVID-19 case emerges with­in the in­sti­tu­tion. 

The first step re­quires the in­di­vid­ual or CMOH to in­form the prin­ci­pal, who im­me­di­ate­ly in­forms the EDHSU, school su­per­vi­sor and cri­sis man­age­ment team with the in­di­vid­ual’s in­for­ma­tion. The in­for­ma­tion is then chan­nelled up to the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer, who in­forms the rel­e­vant per­son­nel at head of­fice. 

The sec­ond step re­quires the per­son, if present, to be es­cort­ed to the quar­an­tine room at the school. Ad­vice is sought from the EDHSU on case man­age­ment and an am­bu­lance is called or they await the par­ent to take the child to a health fa­cil­i­ty. 

The third step in­volves in­form­ing the Ed­u­ca­tion House Of­fi­cer. The EDHSU sub­mits case de­tails to the EHO and the CMOH. The CMOH ad­vis­es on the clo­sure and ear­ly dis­missal/ sani­ti­sa­tion pro­ce­dure. The EDHSU shares with the EHO on­ly any in­for­ma­tion re­ceived from the CMOH, who then li­ais­es with the CEO. Af­ter the CEO speaks with head of­fice, they con­sult with the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee on ear­ly dis­missal/school clo­sure and sani­ti­sa­tion pro­ce­dure for im­ple­men­ta­tion. On­ly then is the in­for­ma­tion col­lat­ed and de­ci­sions are sent down the chain to in­form the school prin­ci­pal.  

The fourth step out­lines that the prin­ci­pal must await a di­rec­tive from the CEO for ear­ly dis­missal/school clo­sure or tran­si­tion to on­line/vir­tu­al mode. 

The prin­ci­pal is re­quired to fol­low the ad­vice of high­er-ups as per the sani­ti­sa­tion pro­ce­dure. The prin­ci­pal is then re­quired to brief staff on the in­ci­dent and its man­age­ment. Par­ents are on­ly to be in­formed of the tem­po­rary ad­just­ments to the timetable. 

The sec­ond to last step is the clean­ing of the school while the CEO li­ais­es with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary for deep clean­ing/sani­ti­sa­tion if rec­om­mend­ed. 

Last­ly, the EDHSU li­ais­es with the prin­ci­pal to over­see the man­age­ment of the sit­u­a­tion, as­sists with rapid re­sults and test­ing, con­firms sani­ti­sa­tion was done, con­firms the cas­es are not on the com­pound, con­firms the pa­tient’s fit­ness for reen­try to the in­sti­tu­tion and sub­mits com­pre­hen­sive re­ports to the EHO, who then chan­nels it through the CEO to head of­fice. 

It’s on­ly the third week of the new aca­d­e­m­ic term for pri­ma­ry school chil­dren and there are al­ready re­ports com­ing to Guardian Me­dia of cas­es crop­ping up in at least 40.

At the close of the first week, of­fi­cial Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion fig­ures in­di­cat­ed there were 28 pos­i­tive stu­dents from 16 schools, with 92 in quar­an­tine.  

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