THA Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy, Zor­isha Hack­ett, says the re­in­state­ment of the COVID-19 mea­sures was not meant to cause pan­ic but to pre­vent a col­lapse in the school sys­tem.

Speak­ing to the me­dia yes­ter­day, Hack­ett said the di­vi­sion re­vised and ac­ti­vat­ed its in­fec­tious dis­ease man­age­ment plan, fo­cus­ing on hy­giene pro­to­cols. This comes af­ter the is­land’s health di­vi­sion re­port­ed an alarm­ing spike in in­fluen­za cas­es this month. In a leaked memo sent to schools on Mon­day, the prin­ci­pals were ad­vised to re­vert to COVID-19 pro­to­cols, which in­clud­ed es­tab­lish­ing en­try pro­ce­dures, sani­ti­sa­tion fa­cil­i­ties and sick­bays.

How­ev­er, Hack­ett said the move is a proac­tive mea­sure.

She said, “We are mind­ful and we don’t want to wait un­til it gets to cri­sis mode and then try to do some proac­tive mea­sures. It’s all proac­tive mea­sures, it’s not meant to alarm us to en­sure we don’t have any cri­sis com­ing out of the To­ba­go space…We want stu­dents to do every­thing we did when we re­turned to school in April 2022.”

She said the di­vi­sion is not man­dat­ing mask-wear­ing but the op­tion is there for par­ents who want to use them.

“We are al­so im­plor­ing to THA work­ers and to bring back the pro­to­cols to our di­vi­sions as well,” she said. Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les