A teacher has test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 at the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School, bring­ing to eight the num­ber of schools which have record­ed pos­i­tive cas­es since the re­sump­tion of class­es on Oc­to­ber 4.

A school source said the COVID-19 pos­i­tive teacher had been in con­tact with over 30 pupils. Be­fore her COVID re­sult was record­ed, she su­per­vised a Home Eco­nom­ics lab at the school the week be­fore Di­vali, the source said.

“The stu­dents in that class were not wear­ing masks be­cause the lab in­volved cook­ing and tast­ing so there were con­cerns of pos­si­ble in­fec­tions in that class,” the source added.

How­ev­er, even though the teacher re­port­ed her re­sult to school of­fi­cials, the school source said there have been no ad­vi­sories is­sued to the stu­dents and their par­ents as to the con­fir­ma­tion of a COVID case at the school.

“This means that stu­dents have con­tin­ued to come to school. They are not aware that their teacher has test­ed pos­i­tive,” the source added.

Even worse, thor­ough sani­ti­sa­tion of the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary school has not been done, the source claimed.

“They sani­tised the lab and ar­eas around but it was not thor­ough sani­ti­sa­tion, just laven­der wa­ter and bleach.”

Not­ing that the school should have been shut down and fu­mi­gat­ed, the source ac­cused the school of­fi­cials of not be­ing trans­par­ent and open about the sit­u­a­tion.

“TTUTA has been in­formed and teach­ers have been stay­ing away from the school since her re­sult showed up pos­i­tive but the stu­dents are con­tin­u­ing to show up,” the source ex­plained.

He said most times the stu­dents are lim­ing in class rather than do­ing con­struc­tive school­work as they are most­ly un­su­per­vised.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion An­to­nia De Fre­itas con­firmed there were eight schools with COVID in­fec­tions

“There are some cas­es at some of the schools. Yes, there are cas­es at Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary,” De Fre­itas said.

On Wednes­day health of­fi­cials re­port­ed there have been 55 con­firmed COVID cas­es at sec­ondary schools since face-to-face class­es re­sumed.

These have forced the schools to close tem­porar­i­ly as sani­ti­sa­tion takes place.

Asked yes­ter­day what rec­om­men­da­tions TTUTA could make in light of the grow­ing in­fec­tions at schools, De Fre­itas said, “TTUTA ad­vised the min­istry pre­vi­ous­ly to on­ly bring out stu­dents who had prac­ti­cals to do. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion made a de­ci­sion to have all stu­dents out and there­fore teach­ers out and so the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion should be the one of­fer­ing sug­ges­tions as to how to deal with this.”

Asked whether it was a bad de­ci­sion, De Fre­itas said, “ I can­not say that, I can­not pro­nounce on that.”

She added she could not iden­ti­fy the eight schools record­ing cas­es, “The Min­istry will have to name those schools.”

The TTUTA pres­i­dent said the union has ad­vised teach­ers to main­tain all pro­to­cols and to do what was best for health and safe­ty in the face of grow­ing in­fec­tions.

De Fre­itas could not say how many teach­ers have been ab­sent over the past five weeks.

“We have to dis­cuss with our mem­bers the cur­rent sce­nario at schools be­fore mak­ing any more pro­nounce­ments,” she added.