CHENNAI: Many private schools in the city have started taking precautions against the spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) over the last few days by issuing advisories and conducting awareness campaigns. Some schools have also installed soaps and sanitisers in the washrooms and classrooms. The private schools have further urged the Tamil Nadu government to issue a circular to all schools, urging them to take precautions.
As the school-going children are susceptible to infection and this is a crucial time for children given the end of the academic year and the ongoing examinations, some school managements called for immediate measures. A member from the management of Maharishi Vidya Mandir Group of Schools said their schools already have soaps in bathrooms. “We have a message broadcast system through which we communicate with parents and students. We have asked students to be careful and posted advisories on notice boards as well,” the member said.
“We have installed soap solution dispensers in all bathrooms of schools and sanitisers in classrooms. We have also conducted awareness for students asking them to wash hands,” said KR Nandakumar, president of private schools association, who is also a part of the management of Sri Sankara Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Pammal. A principal of another popular CBSE school in the city on condition of anonymity said that the efforts to take precautions will be futile if only a few schools are doing it. “Students go to tuition centres after school hours.
Many of our students are writing public exams in another schools. We can prevent an epidemic only if all schools take such efforts at the same time,” she said. However, the Tamil Nadu School Education department is yet to issue any advisory asking schools to take precautions. “We have not received any communication from the Health department. So we have not issued any advisory,” said S Kannappan, director of the department. While the CBSE recently issued a statement that it would allow students to wear masks to public exams, the state government has not taken any stand in this regard. While Kannappan said the decision to permit students to wear masks to exam halls will be taken by the Directorate of Government Examinations (DGE), officials from the DGE said it is the School Education department that has to take a call on the subject.
The Central government has, however, been more proactive on the matter. In a letter addressed to chief secretaries of all states and union territories and Chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education, HRD Ministry Secretary Amit Khare said such awareness along with preventive interventions would help stop and reduce transmission of not only COVID-19 but also other communicable diseases, including flu-like illness. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights on Wednesday said, “The National Commission, as per its functions under section 13 (d) of CRPC Act, 2005, requests and recommends that state education departments in consultation with state health departments take necessary steps to prevent the spread of infection among school children.”
Companies encourage staff to work from home
Information Technology majors and corporate companies across the country have started encouraging employees to work from home. However, the trend is yet to pick up in Tamil Nadu. In the wake of coronavirus outbreak, cloud services firm Zoho Corporation has asked its employees to work from home as a matter of precaution. “We have adopted work-from-home as the default for all our offices worldwide as a matter of precaution, though we have not had any cases,” company Founder-CEO Sridhar Vembu said. Twitter has advised employees across the world to work from home as well.