Prin­ci­pals have got­ten per­mis­sion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to in­form key peo­ple of a COVID-19 case with­in the school. This is ac­cord­ing to an up­date to the pro­to­cols sent by the min­istry on Fri­day fol­low­ing a meet­ing with ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers ear­li­er that day.

Pre­vi­ous­ly there was some con­fu­sion among prin­ci­pals as to the na­ture of what they can di­vulge but the com­mon un­der­stand­ing was that they weren't al­lowed to re­veal any­thing 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 (EDHSU).

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 Wednes­day, May 4 in­di­cate there are at least 316 COVID-19 con­firmed cas­es among staff and stu­dents of 243 schools. While this av­er­ages out to just over one case per af­fect­ed school, par­ents are on edge and wor­ried. Nu­mer­ous par­ents told Guardian Me­dia the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion about the cas­es from the school ad­min­is­tra­tion was adding to their frus­tra­tion.

Re­porter: Rishard Khan