Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

For the sec­ond time in less than a week, a pri­ma­ry school in T&T has been forced shut and staff and stu­dents sent in­to self-quar­an­tine over fears they may have con­tract­ed COVID-19 through a pupil’s rel­a­tive.

The Tacarigua Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School closed yes­ter­day af­ter the fa­ther of an 11-year-old Stan­dard 5 stu­dent at­tend­ing Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) prepa­ra­tion class­es test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus.

The news has so scared par­ents across the coun­try that some are now re­fus­ing to send their chil­dren to school for fur­ther SEA class­es.

Guardian Me­dia learned yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, that this sit­u­a­tion was brew­ing since an­oth­er SEA pupil at the Mar­aval RC test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus last week and there is al­so call for the ex­am to be ei­ther post­poned again or brought for­ward from Au­gust 20.

Not­ing par­ents’ con­cerns yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) act­ing pres­i­dent Clarence Men­doza said his mem­ber­ship be­lieves the ex­am should be post­poned or brought for­ward to lim­it the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther ex­po­sure for stu­dents and staff.

“They are clear­ly stat­ing that at this point in time, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion un­der the di­rec­tive of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, that all schools with their ex­ams should be post­poned un­til fur­ther no­tice. Our stu­dents’ lives are at risk and I don’t think we should go any fur­ther in look­ing at Au­gust 20 to put forth an ex­am­i­na­tion,” Men­doza told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

The NPTA, he said, is al­so seek­ing an ur­gent meet­ing with all stake­hold­ers on the de­vel­op­ments.

T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) mean­while pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas said they will be meet­ing Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials to­day on the de­vel­op­ment. She said the min­istry’s pre­vi­ous COVID guide­lines may need ad­just­ing based on what they’ve wit­nessed in re­cent days. In the mean­time, she ad­vised mem­bers to “do what you have to do to safe­guard your­self and let us fol­low all the nec­es­sary pro­to­cols.”

Rachiel Ram­samooj, an ad­min­is­tra­tor for a SEA Par­ent Sup­port Face­book group which has over 10,000 mem­bers, told Guardian Me­dia par­ents be­came con­cerned since last week when the first COVID case hit Mar­aval RC in their first week back out for SEA prepa­ra­tion.

“Par­ents have de­cid­ed to keep their chil­dren home from Thurs­day last week and they are just wait­ing to see what hap­pens - if the ex­am con­tin­ues at the set date, which is Au­gust 20 and they choose not to send their chil­dren to school and to just send them to the ex­am,” Ram­samooj told Guardian Me­dia.

Calls to Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia for com­ment went unan­swered yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh was asked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of chang­ing the SEA date again due to the lat­est de­vel­op­ments. While say­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the ex­am fell un­der the do­main of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, Deyals­ingh not­ed: “The date was set via cab­i­net note so any al­ter­ations of that date would not be the re­mit of the Min­istry of Health. If we are asked by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to pro­vide any tech­ni­cal ad­vice, med­ical ad­vice - we stand ready to do so.”

The lat­est COVID case is a 43-year-old Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) work­er who re­sides in Ari­ma. He was re­port­ed­ly symp­to­matic for six days and did not iso­late him­self from his fam­i­ly or the pub­lic and dropped his child to school last week.

The cor­po­ra­tion was shut down yes­ter­day for sani­ti­sa­tion while nine em­ploy­ees were sent for tests to de­ter­mine if they had con­tract­ed COVID-19.

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Epi­demi­ol­o­gy at the Min­istry of Health, Dr Naresh Nan­dran, said yes­ter­day that the man, case 148, was de­tect­ed on Sun­day at the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

“Dur­ing the course of last night, we’ve been in con­tact with the prin­ci­pal of that school and have ad­vised that the school be closed and we’re in the process of con­tact trac­ing the stu­dents and their fam­i­lies,” Nan­dran said dur­ing the vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence.

Guardian Me­dia was al­so told the Ari­ma Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion po­lice de­part­ment was al­so shut down yes­ter­day as the child of an of­fi­cer was in the Tacarigua Pres­by­ter­ian SEA class. Ten mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers were sent home.