RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Three stu­dents and an­oth­er teacher from the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School are now in quar­an­tine af­ter be­ing found to have come in­to con­tact with a COVID-pos­i­tive teacher.

The school is one of eight which have re­port­ed COVID in­fec­tions since full class­es for Forms Four to Six stu­dents re­sumed on Oc­to­ber 25.

A school source said yes­ter­day that the three stu­dents and the teacher have been sent for test­ing and are await­ing their re­sults.

The source said al­though the first COVID-19 in­fec­tion took place two weeks ago, there still has not been thor­ough sani­ti­sa­tion of the school. This has not au­gured well for staff morale, the source not­ed.

An­oth­er source who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said main­te­nance staff who were told to sani­tise the Home Eco­nom­ics Lab were un­aware that the teacher had test­ed pos­i­tive. 

“So they were sent to clean with­out be­ing told of the in­fec­tion so they were not wear­ing the full PPE which they should have worn when sani­tis­ing for COVID. We are pray­ing that no­body else gets COVID,” the source said.

Of­fi­cials of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) met with staffers on Thurs­day and toured Block K, which had ear­li­er been con­demned but is now be­ing used to fa­cil­i­tate class­es.

“That block was con­demned be­cause of poor ven­ti­la­tion and air­flow. How can it now be used for class­es when it was pre­vi­ous­ly con­demned?” the source added.

How­ev­er, TTUTA has ad­vised the teach­ers to con­tin­ue teach­ing but not at the risk of their health and safe­ty. Teach­ers at the school have been en­gag­ing in on­line class­es but there are still over 100 stu­dents in at­ten­dance at the school on any giv­en day.

TTUTA pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas told Guardian Me­dia that the union will be meet­ing this week­end to dis­cuss the ris­ing COVID cas­es at the na­tion’s schools. She said TTUTA will make no rec­om­men­da­tions to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion be­cause it had ear­li­er ad­vised that on­ly stu­dents with prac­ti­cals should be al­lowed back to school. How­ev­er, she said the min­istry de­cid­ed to have all stu­dents from Forms 4 to 6 re­turn to phys­i­cal class­es.