Due to how Coronavirus is aggressively spreading among final year senior high school students, the National Council of Parent-Teacher Associations of Ghana has appealed to Government to close down schools for now and post-pone final examinations as a safety precaution.
Contrary to their plea, a Deputy Minister for Health, Okoe Boye thinks otherwise. According to him, closing down schools is not advisable as students can also contract the virus at home too.
Citinewsroom reports that the association in a statement on Monday, July 13, 2020, called for the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) to be postponed following the outbreak of COVID-19 in schools.
According to the association, the call is “to avert further spread of the coronavirus among our children and staff.”
The association also said, “not enough health personnel are either stationed in or attached to many of the schools for routine surveillance due to the pandemic. More worrying is the fact that despite good counsel and encouragement, most parents insist their children should be brought home.”
But Dr Okoe Boye responding to the demands on Eyewitness News said everyone is exposed to the virus and people can only protect themselves from contracting the disease by adhering to the laid down preventive protocols.
“I have to check with the Ghana Education Service on their protocols and on their statutes on letting students go home but the advice I can give as a public health person is that when you pick your child from school and say you are taking your child home, remember the virus is at home, the virus is at the workplace and the virus is on the street. The best bet is to take care of yourself because your child might actually be exposed more.”
“Imagine if you have a parent who is a taxi driver who comes across 200 people before he goes home or imagine a parent who sells at Makola or myself who moves from one hospital to the other, the virus is around. We all can expose our kids. That’s why all of us must take care of ourselves so we don’t carry the virus home,” he said.
