ARTUZ’s latest report is an assessment of the safety of learners, teachers and supporting staff in schools amidst the pandemic. The report highlights the extent schools are putting measures in place to create a safe and conducive environment that contributes towards curbing the spread of COVID-19 in schools. Read on to get more on how well schools in the different provinces have done so far.
Scientific research has proved that covid-19 pathogen as a highly virulent as it can transform from one strain to another and extremely contagious with air transmission as well as having contact with infected person and contaminated surfaces. The World Health Organization (WHO) set standard measures to prevent the spread of the disease and these include preserving social distancing, use of alcohol-based sanitizers when washing hands and surfaces. On top of the use all the precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the sporadic corona virus scientists developed vaccines that are currently being received by various people in their respective countries. In the Zimbabwean scenario the government prioritized front line workers to receive the vaccine fist before the rest of the general populace; the frontline workers include personnel from the police, health department and teachers.
At the moment in Zimbabwe there is a crisis of the shortage of the vaccines to cater for the greater fraction of the Zimbabwean population which is yet to receive the covid-19 jabs. To add on the effects of the 2020 lockdown, the introduction of the lockdown in January 2021 resulted in further disruption of the Zimbabwe national academic calendar. In a bid to mitigate the covid-19 induced crisis the government of Zimbabwe eased the lockdown restrictions resulting in the reopening of schools after the imposed lockdown.
ARTUZ conducted an investigation to assess the safety of learners, teachers, non-teaching staff and members of the communities in which schools are located amidst the pandemic. In all the ten provinces of Zimbabwe, about twenty schools per province were inspected to check if the schools adhere to the WHO stipulated guidelines of covid-19 prevention.
The ARTUZ investigation also seek to check on the school’s adherence to the Standard of Operation Procedures (SOP) that was crafted by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC).
The outcome of the ARTUZ investigation reflected that all sampled schools remain COVID-19 danger zones because of shortages of required resources to reduce the spread of the pandemic disease, unavailability of covid-19 test kits in schools and inadequate supply of vaccines in communities surrounding schools. The investigation observations reflected that there is 10% drop in percentage safety of school environments since the reopening of schools on 23 August and the 6 September 2021 in comparison with the previous post lockdown school’s safety across the nation.
Read the full report here (2MB PDF)
Source: ARTUZ
