Af­ter one week of Forms Four to Six stu­dents re­turn­ing to phys­i­cal class­rooms, some stu­dents at the Iere High School in Siparia have opt­ed to stay away from class­es af­ter two stu­dents test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

School per­son­nel con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that a broth­er and sis­ter test­ed pos­i­tive af­ter health of­fi­cials con­firmed their moth­er con­tract­ed the virus.

Ac­cord­ing to per­son­nel, a teacher in­formed prin­ci­pal Roy Nan­lal last Wednes­day that a stu­dent re­port­ed that health of­fi­cials had or­dered his quar­an­tine for 21 days. School of­fi­cials ver­i­fied the re­port with the par­ent and sent the in­for­ma­tion to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, who or­dered Nan­lal to shut down the class­rooms and have them sani­tised.

All the stu­dents and teach­ers who had con­tact with the stu­dent had to stay away from school pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and screen­ing by health per­son­nel.

Staff said Nan­lal called a meet­ing and the fol­low­ing day, a com­pa­ny sani­tised the school so stu­dents and staff could re­sume class­es.

How­ev­er, some stu­dents chose not to at­tend school, so teach­ers vol­un­teered to teach on­line on Thurs­day and Fri­day. Class­es re­sumed yes­ter­day, with stu­dents re­turn­ing.

A so­cial me­dia post about the in­ci­dent up­set per­son­nel, prompt­ing a staffer to re­spond.

“It is dis­heart­en­ing that the world is fac­ing COVID. The coun­try is fac­ing COVID, and when it comes to the schools, you hope that it gets a greater mea­sure of sup­port. That is not what every­body did. This post is like you are in the shad­ow, and you come out shoot­ing darts,” the staffer’s post read.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry said it is mon­i­tor­ing five sus­pect­ed cas­es at the school.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, dis­trict nurs­es are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a con­tact list of 60-plus peo­ple for stu­dent cas­es. How­ev­er, the Coun­ty Med­ical of Health for St Patrick has not con­firmed the de­tails. 

An up­date from the Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Unit stat­ed that Nan­lal sub­mit­ted a list of per­sons for con­tact trac­ing, which the Coun­ty Med­ical of Health has not con­firmed. There were three sep­a­rate sus­pect­ed cas­es in­volv­ing staff mem­bers who had no con­nec­tion to each oth­er or the stu­dent cas­es. One staff mem­ber, who was nev­er at school, test­ed pos­i­tive. One mem­ber had an as­sess­ment but no swab was deemed nec­es­sary by the med­ical of­fi­cer and an­oth­er mem­ber was a pri­ma­ry con­tact to a pos­i­tive case. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly said sim­i­lar to Feb­ru­ary-Ju­ly when Forms Four-Six stu­dents re­turned to school, there were pos­i­tive cas­es and pri­ma­ry con­tacts iden­ti­fied among school per­son­nel and stu­dents since Oc­to­ber 4.

She said this was the rea­son the min­istry set up the Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict Health Unit in Jan­u­ary to man­age these sit­u­a­tions with the CMoH of­fices in dis­tricts. The guide­lines con­tain clear in­struc­tions on how COVID mat­ters must be han­dled and es­ca­lat­ed to the dis­trict nurs­es. She said when they iden­ti­fy pos­i­tive cas­es or pri­ma­ry con­tacts, the team man­age the sit­u­a­tion.

“It is ex­pect­ed that these cas­es will arise, hence the es­tab­lish­ment and op­er­a­tion of the ED­HU and the is­su­ing of clear guide­lines on these mat­ters. Where sani­ti­sa­tion of the premis­es is deemed nec­es­sary by the ED­HU and the CMOH, this is al­so rou­tine­ly done. In some cas­es, this would re­quire school clo­sure for a day, af­ter which the stu­dents can be read­mit­ted. MTS pro­vides these emer­gency ser­vices to the schools,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

At the Min­istry of Health COVID-19 up­date yes­ter­day, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor of the Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Di­vi­sion Dr Av­ery Hinds said any ad­di­tion­al move­ment of peo­ple would con­tribute to the spread of COVID-19. He said Oc­to­ber had more cas­es than the pre­ced­ing three months. Asked if safe zones and re­sump­tion of schools had played a role, he said the in­crease in cas­es pre­dat­ed the two new mea­sures. He said the health unit at the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry mon­i­tors trans­mis­sion in schools and com­piles in­for­ma­tion for the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.

He said the CMoH sup­port the unit to en­sure sit­u­a­tions do not get out of con­trol.