ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

With a rise in flu-like cas­es in To­ba­go, the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, and Tech­nol­o­gy is re­turn­ing to COVID-19 hy­giene mea­sures to con­tain and pre­vent any fu­ture out­break among the school pop­u­la­tion.

In a leaked memo sent to schools on Mon­day, prin­ci­pals were ad­vised to re­vert to pro­to­cols, in­clud­ing es­tab­lish­ing en­try pro­ce­dures, sani­ti­sa­tion of fa­cil­i­ties, and sick­bays.

The re­lease of the memo came yes­ter­day, hours af­ter Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Sec­re­tary Dr Faith B Yis­rael, ad­mit­ted to an alarm­ing spike in res­pi­ra­to­ry in­fec­tions.

In the memo shared on so­cial me­dia, the di­vi­sion ad­vised all prin­ci­pals to re­ac­ti­vate the nec­es­sary pro­to­cols at their re­spec­tive schools to en­sure the safe­ty and well-be­ing of all stu­dents and teach­ers.

In light of the alarm­ing in­crease in the num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als ex­hibit­ing flu-like symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with both the In­fluen­za and COVID-19 virus­es, the di­vi­sion said it is tak­ing pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures to curb the spread of these ill­ness­es with­in the school com­mu­ni­ty.

All prin­ci­pals were asked to pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to sev­er­al key ar­eas, in­clud­ing en­try pro­to­cols, sani­ti­sa­tion fa­cil­i­ties, and sick­bays.

To al­low the di­vi­sion to ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to the needs of all schools dur­ing this pe­ri­od, prin­ci­pals are re­quired to con­duct an in­ter­nal COVID-19 safe­ty au­dit. This au­dit will help de­ter­mine if there is a need for re­sources and the school’s abil­i­ty to im­ple­ment the safe­ty mea­sures.

Schools have un­til to­mor­row to pro­vide this in­for­ma­tion.

The in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed al­so in­cludes the num­ber of func­tion­al sinks avail­able with­in the school, as well as the num­ber of ad­di­tion­al sinks re­quired, and whether ad­di­tion­al suit­able san­i­ta­tion fa­cil­i­ties for prop­er hand hy­giene are need­ed.

Prin­ci­pals were al­so asked to re­port on the num­ber of en­try points on the schools’ com­pounds and their cur­rent sta­tus re­gard­ing COVID-19 pro­to­cols.

The memo al­so called on schools with sick bays be­ing re­quest­ed to dis­close the ca­pac­i­ty and re­sources avail­able in these ar­eas. The memo said this in­for­ma­tion will help the di­vi­sion in ac­cu­rate­ly as­sess­ing each school’s abil­i­ty to han­dle po­ten­tial cas­es.

With­in this list, prin­ci­pals are to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive list of sani­ti­sa­tion and hy­gien­ic sup­plies re­quired to rein­tro­duce the nec­es­sary pro­to­cols.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the schools must give the num­ber of stu­dents at­tend­ing the school, cat­e­gorised by gen­der and year group. This piece of in­for­ma­tion will al­low the di­vi­sion to as­sess the po­ten­tial risks and al­lo­cate re­sources ac­cord­ing­ly.

On Tues­day, the Ro­man Catholic Arch­dio­cese al­so said it was reim­ple­ment­ing some COVID-19 pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures in its church­es.

Oth­er re­li­gious groups like the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, the An­gli­can Church and the An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion have al­ready asked their mem­bers to fol­low the pro­to­cols in light of a rise in COVID cas­es and record­ed deaths in Trinidad.