Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Twen­ty-eight stu­dents from 16 schools na­tion­wide have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 since the start of the third aca­d­e­m­ic term one week ago, ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed by the Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Unit.

There are al­so 18 stu­dents who are still await­ing re­sults while 92 have been quar­an­tined.

In all, 49 of the na­tion’s 830 pub­lic schools have had stu­dents test­ed for the dis­ease.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has said that the Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Unit has been as­sist­ing prin­ci­pals with the man­age­ment of COVID-19 cas­es since phys­i­cal school re­sumed in Feb­ru­ary 2021 to the present.

Pul­mo­nolo­gist and Dean at the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Pro­fes­sor Ter­ence Seemu­n­gal told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the cas­es in the school sys­tem were not sur­pris­ing.

“The Omi­cron vari­ant has not been caus­ing se­vere dis­ease so we would ex­pect that when schools open up, not just schools but the pop­u­la­tion and of course...the East­er week­end was a lit­tle while ago, that you will ex­pect a rise in cas­es,” he said.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion dis­missed a ru­mour cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia which claimed talks will be held at the end of this week to close schools and re­vert to a hy­brid sys­tem in light of the cas­es.

New­ly-elect­ed Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher’s As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Kevin David yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia the cas­es were alarm­ing but said stake­hold­ers need to come to­geth­er to ad­dress the is­sue.

“We need to en­sure there are prop­er plans and poli­cies in place for this,” he said.

He al­so re­newed the as­so­ci­a­tion’s call for blend­ed learn­ing to be re­con­sid­ered as an op­tion.

While the num­ber of cas­es are alarm­ing, Pro­fes­sor Seemu­n­gal said the best ac­tion would be to “stay the course.” He said the cur­rent out­break in the coun­try and schools did not war­rant the rein­tro­duc­tion of re­stric­tions.

“Once the hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion isn’t go­ing up, I think we just have to be pre­pared to ride it out,” he said.

“The price is very high to start back clos­ing down again. You have to bal­ance. It’s an eco­nom­ic cost against a so­cial cost.”

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to get from the min­istry an of­fi­cial list of the 16 schools that had con­firmed cas­es or the 49 that had stu­dents test­ed.

Par­ents who spoke with Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over what they claimed was a cer­tain lev­el of se­cre­cy dis­played by the school prin­ci­pals in treat­ing the cas­es and dis­sem­i­nat­ing in­for­ma­tion.

TTUTA’s first vice pres­i­dent Mar­lon Seales, how­ev­er, not­ed prin­ci­pals too are of­ten fac­ing a com­mu­ni­ca­tion gap.

“We are con­cerned with that feed­back loop in terms of the in­for­ma­tion go­ing to health teams and com­ing back to the schools and the...ad­vice on what is the next step in terms of iso­lat­ing stu­dents, shut­ting down schools, do­ing the sani­tis­ing, that kind of thing,” he said.

Up to Feb­ru­ary 23, there have been 12 pae­di­atric fa­tal­i­ties due to COVID-19, rang­ing from new­borns to 18 years. There were al­so at least 76 cas­es of Mul­ti-Sys­tem In­flam­ma­to­ry Syn­drome in Chil­dren (MIS-C) record­ed. The con­di­tion is rare but brought on af­ter a child con­tracts COVID-19.

Se­nior Pe­di­atric Emer­gency Med­i­cine Spe­cial­ist at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA), Dr Joanne Paul, has not­ed there were no cas­es of MIS-C in those chil­dren who con­tract­ed the dis­ease while be­ing ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed.

There are cur­rent­ly vac­cines for chil­dren as young as 12 years old and the Min­istry of Health is work­ing to pro­cure the pae­di­atric Pfiz­er dos­es for those from 5 and 11 years.

Spain has of­fered to do­nate 40,000 dos­es but there is yet to be a de­fin­i­tive date of ar­rival in T&T. The lat­est up­date from the Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is that he signed the draft do­na­tion agree­ment on April 13.