COVID-19: Oyo govt releases new guidelines as schools resumes

The Oyo State Government, on Wednesday, released new guidelines for the opening of schools in the state.

The state government announced various measures that were in place to prevent the spread of coronavirus in schools.

Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Honourable Olasunkanmi Olaleye, disclosed that various trainings have been given to categories of school heads, principals and teachers on how to monitor and report any sign of illness that showed symptoms of Covid-19 to the authority.

Olaleye said the State has set up Emergency Operation Centers (EOCs) in the State capital and at zonal levels and as well as appointed Incident Managers for each school who will report any emergency directly to the EOCs through special communication lines.

He went further to state that each class would have a Warder whose obligation is to relate with the Incident Managers on his or her observations.

Among the measures were the compulsory hand-washing points at the school entrances and at the entrance of each classroom as well as alcohol-based sanitizer for the use of students and teachers.

“Throughout last week, what we have been doing was to train school heads and teachers of public and private schools, preparing them for this task of taking firm control of preventing the spread of Covid-19 into our schools as we resume.

“Each school has been mandated to strictly enforce social distancing and observe other protocols against Covid-19 among teachers and students as laid down by NCDC.

“Students are to come to school with their facemasks and follow instructions on the guidelines from the management, these are imperative the government cannot lock down forever and education is an aspect of life that should not be allowed to suffer backwardness.

“I can boldly tell you that with these measures in place, the children are safer with us in school than even many homes, imagine situations whereby students are asked to go to private lessons that provided no safety measure, many follow their parents to the market and workplaces where the possibility of contracting the virus is high, so they are rather better kept at school than home,” he observed.

Olasunkanmi said the fear being exercised by the general public over the resumption was appreciated by the government, as it had helped the administration to still go deeply into keeping to stringent measures to avert the spread of the virus.