DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Chick­en­pox has spread at the Five Rivers Sec­ondary School, caus­ing in­fect­ed chil­dren to be quar­an­tined.

While the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) placed the num­ber of con­firmed cas­es at 15, a teacher at the school said the fig­ure was around 40, in­clud­ing one teach­ing staff mem­ber.

Seek­ing to al­lay con­cerns in a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health (MoH) said the virus is en­dem­ic in Trinidad and To­ba­go and thus oc­ca­sion­al out­breaks can be ex­pect­ed in schools, pris­ons, and homes for chil­dren or the el­der­ly.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, who re­spond­ed to ques­tions about this de­vel­op­ment in a What­sApp ex­change, said a small clus­ter of cas­es have been iden­ti­fied with­in the school pop­u­la­tion of 845 pupils.

“There have been chick­en­pox cas­es at the school, which has af­fect­ed two class­es main­ly. As is the usu­al pro­ce­dure in such cir­cum­stances, the MoE is li­ais­ing with MoH of­fi­cials on con­tain­ing the sit­u­a­tion to pre­vent fur­ther spread. The school con­tin­ues to be close­ly mon­i­tored at this time,” she said.

Act­ing TTUTA pres­i­dent Adesh Dwari­ka al­so con­firmed that the school had been grap­pling with the high­ly con­ta­gious virus. He said at least 15 stu­dents were in­fect­ed in the last few weeks. Dwari­ka added, how­ev­er, that while the virus has spread, it is un­der con­trol.

“There were about 15 cas­es of chick­en­pox in the school and the school would have tak­en the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions. So, what they would have done, they would have quar­an­tined the rel­e­vant stu­dents as well as the class­es that those stu­dents would have come from,” he said.

But, a teacher who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, claimed there were more than 20 cas­es in one class­room alone. The virus start­ed in a Form 1 class and spread to Form 2 and Form 3 class­rooms with new cas­es as re­cent as yes­ter­day, the teacher said. The teacher said staff are now fear­ful of con­tract­ing the ill­ness, which has al­ready in­fect­ed one of their col­leagues. She added that there is al­so a lack of wa­ter at the school.

“The doc­tor told us to sani­tise, to wear masks and we’ll see how the num­bers go up. The teach­ers sug­gest­ed Google Class­room but not every­body in favour and you know he (the prin­ci­pal) said he can­not make that de­ci­sion yet. What­ev­er rec­om­men­da­tions and de­ci­sions and strate­gies to come up with, what­ev­er plan to have to write up and in­form the min­istry, and is on­ly then, ac­cord­ing to how the num­bers climb, is on­ly then they could make a de­ci­sion to tell us what to do but right now we have nor­mal school,” the teacher said.

Mean­while, TTUTA’s act­ing pres­i­dent said teach­ers were vac­ci­nat­ed yes­ter­day af­ter a vis­it from the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health. They re­ceived their first shot and will get the sec­ond in No­vem­ber.

The MoH al­so con­firmed in­fect­ed class­rooms were sani­tised while the Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion had been trained.

The MoH said chick­en­pox be­gins with flu-like symp­toms in­clud­ing fever, cough, run­ny nose, headache and sore throat as well as feel­ing sick, tired and slug­gish

With­in a few days, red swollen spots or bumps may ap­pear. The bumps can spread over the en­tire body, as well as in­side the mouth, eye­lids or gen­i­tal area and turn in­to pim­ple like blis­ters filled with clear or cloudy flu­id. The blis­ters can break open, of­ten leak­ing flu­id.

The pub­lic was ad­vised that good hy­giene prac­tices can pre­vent and re­duce the spread of chick­en­pox, in­clud­ing wash­ing hands reg­u­lar­ly with soap and wa­ter and sani­tis­ing sur­faces. Chil­dren should al­so be kept at home and adults should stay away from work if un­well.

Mean­while, Five Rivers Sec­ondary was closed at lunchtime yes­ter­day due to plumb­ing is­sues linked to their wa­ter woes. TTUTA’s act­ing pres­i­dent said he was in­formed there were sev­en func­tion­al toi­lets out of 20, which is not enough for the size of the school pop­u­la­tion.

“They told me sev­en was work­ing but it was in­suf­fi­cient for the pop­u­la­tion. So, cur­rent­ly, the school su­per­vi­sor would have vis­it­ed and what­not and the prin­ci­pal would have ac­quired an ad­di­tion­al 13 toi­lets and what­not to be fixed and in­stal­la­tion,” he said.

The school should be re­opened to­day.