Renu­ka Singh

Stan­dard Five stu­dents have been re­as­sured that they will be al­lowed back to school by April 12 once COVID-19 num­bers re­main at low lev­els.

How­ev­er, the coun­try's bor­ders will re­main closed as there is no fund­ing avail­able to pay for a sec­ond na­tion­al shut­down, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said last night.

Speak­ing dur­ing his Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter, Row­ley said that while peo­ple want the coun­try to re­open its bor­ders, one of the chal­lenges is a sec­ond COVID-19 spike that would trig­ger a sec­ond lock­down. But he warned there is no mon­ey and no fund­ing to be ac­cessed if that has to hap­pen.

"We are open­ing up slow­ly," Row­ley said.

"We have pret­ty much used up what wig­gle room we had. That high price of a lock­down, let us avoid it.”

The Prime Min­is­ter called for more pa­tience among the cit­i­zen­ry.

"The re­sources are not avail­able. With the best will in the world, we would not find the mon­ey to give 50,000 or 60,000 peo­ple a pay­cheque every month," he said.

"It is bet­ter to re­spect the threat that is be­fore us.”

On March 13 last year, schools were closed to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19 and an on­line sys­tem of teach­ing was im­ple­ment­ed. By De­cem­ber, it was an­nounced that vir­tu­al school­ing would con­tin­ue in­to this year. Fifth Form stu­dents prepar­ing for ex­ams were al­lowed to re­turn to in-per­son class­es on Feb­ru­ary 8. How­ev­er, par­ents of Stan­dard Five stu­dents, who are sched­uled to sit the SEA ex­am on June 10, were anx­ious about when their chil­dren would get to re­turn to class­es.

In re­as­sur­ing, Fifth Stan­dard stu­dents that they would re­turn to in-per­son class on April 12 once the COVID lev­els re­mained low, Row­ley point­ed out that nurs­eries and pre-schools were to re­main closed. This was per­haps in ref­er­ence to an in­ci­dent ear­li­er this week in which a two-year-old drowned at a school in Cou­va. Un­der the cur­rent COVID-19 pro­to­cols, the school should not have been op­er­at­ing.

With re­gards to the vac­cine grab, Row­ley said there was an agree­ment for the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty, with each coun­try pro­vid­ing a pre-pay­ment.

"The com­mit­ment was for 20 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion," he said.

Row­ley said the oth­er 80 per cent would have to come from the open mar­ket.

The Prime Min­is­ter said he was con­fi­dent that the vac­cine sit­u­a­tion would re­solve it­self and has spo­ken to gov­ern­ments across the globe who have the vac­cine and are in a po­si­tion to as­sist.

"And I have con­fi­dence that very soon, some­thing pos­i­tive is go­ing to hap­pen be­cause the world can­not in­oc­u­late it­self in one cor­ner while the virus is threat­en­ing to mu­tate in an­oth­er cor­ner. That makes no sense," he said.

"Ig­nore the lies, ig­nore the ad­vice of the ad­vis­ers who were wrong in the be­gin­ning, who were wrong in the mid­dle and go­ing to be wrong in the end," he said.

He added, “Just a lit­tle pa­tience.”