Bắc giang
Preventing Covid-19 pandemic in schools
Continuously detecting infection cases (F0s)
At the Voi Township Secondary School No. 1 (Lang Giang district), after discovering that a F0 was a student of Class 7A4 on November 30, 2021, the school became a pandemic hotspot when the number of F0s reached 21 in the following days, including 20 students and one teacher. Nearly 100 F1s (those with close contact with F0s) had to be quarantined at concentrated facilities and at home. For more than 3 weeks, teachers had to teach online as the school was used as a concentrated quarantine area.
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Medical staff take samples for Covid-19 testing of students at the Ngo Si Lien Primary School (Bac Giang city). |
At the Voi Township Secondary School No. 2, more than 10 students and teachers have contracted Covid-19 with unknown sources of infection, and hundreds of other students have to be quarantined. Before that, 16 F0s were discovered at the Dong Coc Kindergarten (Luc Ngan district).
In Bac Giang city, in recent days, positive cases were continuously detected in schools, most of them were recorded at the Ngo Si Lien Primary School, causing thousands of teachers and students to take samples for testing overnight and undergo concentrated and home quarantine, thus greatly affecting teaching and learning. Hundreds of parents became F0s, F1s and F2s, and their lives turned upside down.
Previously, the Department of Education and Training of Bac Giang city sent an official dispatch requesting schools and educational centers to strictly implement regulations on Covid-19 prevention and control. However, some schools and foreign teachers have not followed the regulations properly, enabling the disease to spread.
The Chairman of the provincial People's Committee has just sent a written document criticizing the Director of the Department of Education and Training; the head of the Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control in Bac Giang city; and Chairman of the People's Committee of Bac Giang city. He requested the Bac Giang city Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control focus resources and use all means in a week to wipe out the outbreak at the Ngo Si Lien Primary School so as not to create new outbreaks.
Making teaching and learning activities uninterrupted
The whole province currently has about 4,000 students who are F1s and nearly 2,000 who are F2s. Nearly 200 schools deploy online learning or combine face-to-face and online learning. More than 10 schools have to be requisitioned as quarantine areas, and 13 schools allow students not to learn.
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Students at the Tan Hung Primary School (Lang Giang district) have their temperature checked before entering class. |
Facing this fact, the Department of Education and Training has directed educational establishments to continue implementing the plans to ensure safety in schools in the province, determining the level of the epidemic to organize appropriate teaching methods.
At the same time, educational establishments must be ready to prepare for complicated pandemic developments. Currently, most schools (primary, secondary, and high schools) have arranged online and face-to-face classrooms. The education sector has actively cooperated with the health sector and localities to speed up Covid-19 vaccination for students.
Now, the province has more than 174,000 school-age children vaccinated, of them over 94,000 have received the first dose, reaching 54 percent and over 27 percent have got the second shot. Nearly 19 percent of the local students are not injected yet. The rate of officials, teachers and staff in the schools receiving the second injection is more than 69 percent and the booster shot over 24 percent.
Currently, students under 12 years of age are not vaccinated yet, so the risk of Covid-19 infection is very high if the epidemic hits schools. Therefore, the Steering Committees for Covid-19 Prevention and Control in localities need to strengthen anti-pandemic measures, not be subjective and neglectful; promote communications work; further raise the responsibilities of each agency, unit, department and individual; and strictly handle violations. In particular, schools need to continue to thoroughly understand and strictly follow the guiding documents by authorities at all levels on pandemic prevention and control; closely coordinate with students' families to implement "5K" regulations; strengthen management, monitoring and supervision to prevent the epidemic from entering schools.
They must prepare the best scenarios and plans to flexibly adapt to each level of the epidemic, ensure the health and safety of students and teachers as well as the quality of teaching and learning.
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