Schools ‘safe’ amidst surge

Calling the return to school two months ago as the litmus test, the Ministry of Education said yesterday it was satisfied children can safely continue to attend classes, even as Barbados continues to deal with a surge in COVID-19 cases.

In addition, within the next few weeks, the ministry will be utilising a special vaccination bus to visit secondary schools in an attempt to get more students protected against the deadly viral illness.

This was all revealed yesterday in a televised press conference by Minister of Education Kay McConney, Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradshaw and Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Anton Best.

Archer-Bradshaw said special vaccination consent forms had been sent out electronically to parents recently, and already more than 130 had responded positively.

“We are very glad to see this, and we expect that numbers of parents agreeing to get their children vaccinated will go up after today. We feel strongly the vaccination is an added layer of protection,” she added.

She also revealed that special programmes would be utilised by teachers in the new term to help students who had started to fall behind expected standards due to the 24 months of online teaching before physical classes restarted in February. (BA)

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