The Executive Director of Child Rights International, (CRI) Mr Bright Appiah, has noted that the decision to close down schools in the country as a result of COVID-19 must be based on science or medical evidence and not emotions
In a statement issued yesterday in Accra, he said since it had not been proven yet that the students contracted the disease on school campuses or their homes, the only reason that must determine the closure must be through scientific data.
Mr Appiah suggested to the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to provide in its daily data updates, reports on the behaviour of COVID-19 among children.
This, according to the statement, would help understand the pattern behaviour of COVID-19 among children so as to inform policy direction and to also know how serious the consequences are for children.
“In most advanced countries research has shown that the transmission of the COVID-19 among age cohort of 20 and below is slow as compared to the vulnerable groups,”
“In the Ghanaian context, there is the need for thorough medical research in order to design policies to address specific needs of children in this direction,” it said.
The statement said further that immunologists must establish the rate of infections among children to come out with reproductive spread of the virus.
“In other jurisdiction, the reproductive number took into consideration the rate of infections among children, the number of children admitted to the hospital and the number of deaths due to to corona virus,” it said.
The statement, however, proposed to the Ghana Education Service and the GHS to provide maximum security and protection services to affected schools and also ensure that the protocols were observed.
It also called for quality medical services to be provided in all schools to provide the needed services.
According to the statement, GES and GHS should provide the general exit mechanism for integrating children who are in schools back into the community after they had written their examinations.
“The fight against Covid-19 is a shared responsibility so let us come together and uproot this disease from our midst,” it said.
Source: The Ghanaian Times
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