Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Prin­ci­pals have re­ceived per­mis­sion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to in­form key peo­ple of COVID-19 cas­es with­in their schools.

The de­ci­sion was record­ed in an up­date to the pro­to­cols sent by the min­istry on Fri­day, fol­low­ing a meet­ing with ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers ear­li­er that day. 

Pre­vi­ous­ly, prin­ci­pals weren’t al­lowed to re­veal such de­tails based on guide­lines from the Min­istry of Health and Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, an up­date to the pro­to­cols al­lows for cer­tain peo­ple to be in­formed of a pos­i­tive case once per­mis­sion is giv­en by the Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Sur­veil­lance Unit.

Ac­cord­ing to the up­date, these are: 

• Group/Class/Form teacher

• Sub­ject teacher where ap­plic­a­ble

• Par­ents of the class - in­form­ing them of the pos­i­tive case (no names should be called) and ask­ing them to ob­serve their chil­dren care­ful­ly for symp­toms.

• Par­ents of close con­tacts - in­form­ing them that their child has been iden­ti­fied as a close con­tact and will be re­quired to quar­an­tine pend­ing the re­sults of a PCR or Anti­gen test. The par­ents must be ad­vised that the re­sults of the test must be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the Prin­ci­pal im­me­di­ate­ly up­on re­ceipt.

Of­fi­cial fig­ures as of May 4 in­di­cat­ed that there were at least 316 con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es among staff and stu­dents of 243 schools. Nu­mer­ous par­ents told Guardian Me­dia the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion about the cas­es from re­spec­tive school ad­min­is­tra­tions had added to their frus­tra­tion. 

While the new pro­to­col will im­prove com­mu­ni­ca­tion, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry School Prin­ci­pals’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Car­lene Hayes, said it may not be what some par­ents were hop­ing for.

“It’s not an en­tire school pop­u­la­tion phone call and let­ter to the en­tire school pop­u­la­tion. We are go­ing specif­i­cal­ly to the groups and class­es that are af­fect­ed, the par­ents of the class­es and the par­ents of the close con­tacts,” she said. 

She al­so urged par­ents to com­mu­ni­cate the child’s COVID-19 sta­tus im­me­di­ate­ly to prin­ci­pals when it is de­ter­mined. 

“That’s very im­por­tant. We can­not, we will not get the re­sults. Prin­ci­pals don’t get the re­sults. It’s the par­ents of the stu­dents re­ceive the re­sults and they now have to send the re­sults to us to then al­so deal with the sit­u­a­tion,” she said. 

Five more COVID-19 deaths, 574 new cas­es

The Min­istry of Health has re­port­ed five ad­di­tion­al COVID-19 deaths, tak­ing to­tal deaths in T&T to 3,861.

The fa­tal­i­ties were three el­der­ly men and two mid­dle-aged men. There were al­so 574 new in­fec­tions, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of cas­es for the coun­try to date up to 152,380.

Ac­tive cas­es rose from 8,731 to 8,817 and of these 192 were hos­pi­talised, an in­crease from Mon­day’s 188.

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