Sending students home will further spread virus – GES Director-General

Deputy Director-General for Quality and Access of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Dr Kwabena B. Tandoh, says keeping students in Senior High Schools with recorded cases is the best way stop the spread of the virus.

He noted that if students are sent home without completing the contact tracing, monitoring the spread of the virus will be extremely difficult.

This statement follows calls by some educational unions for the closure of reopened Senior High Schools.

Over 55 of students of Accra Girls’ Senior High School and other Senior High Schools tested positive for coronavirus.

The latest group to join the call for the closure of the SHSs is the COVID-19 Technical Team of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The team has asked the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to value the lives of Ghanaian students, teachers and non-teaching staff and take immediate steps to reverse its decision and to begin the process of returning students to their homes.

Speaking on Atinka FM’s AM Drive with host Ekourba Gyasi, Deputy Director-General for Quality and Access of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Dr Kwabena B. Tandoh, said the GES does not work in isolation and that it will do all it can to protect these students.

Dr Pius Essandoh, an Associate Member of the NDC’s COVID-19 technical team who also reacted to the issue on Atinka AM Drive, asked the government to conduct mass testing of students to ascertain their COVID-19 status before they are released to their parents, to minimize the risk of exporting cases from campuses to communities.

He noted that the government needs to act swiftly in this matter, as it ultimately bears moral responsibility for any COVID-19 infections on campuses.