COVID-19: Our testing system is challenged- Education Ministry PRO

The Public Relations Officer(PRO) for the Ministry of Education, Ekow Vincent Assafuah has said that Ghana’s testing capacity  in the fight against COVID-19 is challenged hence the  the Ministry’s inability to test all students before reopening of schools.
Speaking on Atinka TV’s  Morning Show, Ghana Nie,  on Wednesday, he said: “We still have a challenge with our testing capacity. The testing capacity is challenged because the number of people we used to test before have increased. Now if you want to test all the students, by the time the results come out, he or she might have contracted the disease while waiting. So the best alternative is to adhere to the safety protocols”.
Ekow Vincent stated that it was rather proper to ensure that students were provided with PPEs and also ensure they adhere to the safety protocols to protect them.
“For us at the GES in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service (GHS), we suggested that the best approach was to strictly follow the safety protocols, and therefore we provided sanitizers, veronica buckets, tissue papers and soaps in all the schools, to enable the children protect themselves,” he said.
This comes after six students in the Accra Girls Senior High School tested positive for COVID-19, causing fear and panic amongst parents and the students as a whole.
It has also been noted that over 600 contacts have been traced in relation to the outbreak in the particular Senior High School and others.
Reacting to the issue at Accra Girls SHS, he said ,”Maybe the children who have tested positive might have brought it from home or  contracted it in school. But the collaboration between GES and GHS with the help of about 200 people across the country in our various schools, when we see signals of a student getting covid-19, immediately we isolate the person. GES personnel also make sure that they are isolated.”
For the children who have been infected, he assured that, “I say this to the grace of God that the six students who tested positive at Accra Girls have been quarantined, and the GHS is also managing and treating them so that they can go back to the classroom to learn.”
For the stranded parents who went to evacuate their children from the school upon the news, Ekow Vincent said,”We heard that some parents went to school to evacuate their children because they were alarmed, ‘No we have not gotten there yet’, because there is a subtle agreement between the GES and GHS and parents to take good care of the students whiles they have been entrusted to the GES,”.
He was of the view that if students and teachers adhere to the safety protocols, it will not get to a stage where schools would have to close down.
“We are doing everything possible  to ensure the safety of students. We are trying so well to tackle the  situation so that it will not escalate to the point we have to close down schools,” he said.
 
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