Six Reasons Why Schools Must Not be Opened During Covid Pandemic
By RMN News Service
As many countries are planning to reopen schools during the coronavirus pandemic, here are six reasons why the decision can boomerang.
1. The reopening of schools will expand the area for the infection to spread. As a result, more teachers, children, and their parents will get infected.
2. Since the testing and hospital facilities are still limited in many countries, it will put an extra burden on the healthcare systems which may result in more deaths.
3. Many parents will not be able to afford the testing costs which are extremely high.
4. If a student or a teacher gets infected in a particular class, the entire class will have to go to a compulsory quarantine. It will cause disruption in the delivery of education.
5. If one or more deaths take place in a school because of Covid infection, it will have a depressing impact on the entire school and most parents will stop sending their children to such schools.
6. It will not be possible for schools to repeatedly test students and teachers who can get infected any day and bring infection to school.
In order to address these issues, the local governments and school administrations should make custom roadmaps for each school keeping in view the intensity of virus in the area where the school is located.
These roadmaps should be publicly shared with parents, teachers, and the civil society through government / school websites to have their comments before taking the decision to open the school.
