Last week was significant because schools started to re-open once again after one-and-a-half years. After COVID-19 hit Sri Lanka in March last year, schools were conducted once in a while and even that for selected grades on selected days of the week. But soon after starting that process, Sri Lanka was hit by one COVID-19 wave after another and schools were kept closed all the time. Parents are happy because now their children can receive education while they can have some ‘free time’ for themselves.
All media showed how schools were prepared to re-open. Parents and all other relevant individuals and groups hurriedly sprayed disinfectants and de-contaminants all over the schools wasting thousands of rupees, all the other resources, and hours of valuable time, while paying very little attention towards cleaning all possible dengue mosquito breeding sites located within and around school premises. No attention was paid to the dengue mosquito breeding sites located next to school premises. Even one dengue mosquito is enough to give dengue to schoolchildren and to create a dengue breeding area.
According to Consultant Virologists, epidemiologists and experts, ‘decontamination’ is a useless act of wasting valuable time and money. According to them, there is no COVID-19 virus inside schools which had been closed for several months and it is completely safe for the children to come and study without spraying disinfectants and de-contaminants all over school premises. Just cleaning the school premises is more than enough.
A worker engaged in de-contaminating a classroom.
But they point out a more dangerous threat to schoolchildren than COVID-19. It is dengue. Nowadays, it is obvious that dengue is more dangerous for children than COVID-19 because almost all schools have possible dengue mosquito breeding sites. All schools were closed for several months and by now there are several dengue mosquito breeding sites in them including garbage collected inside for months without any cleaning.
But unfortunately, the cleaners and the authorities who guided them messed up the priorities badly. According to the experts, they tried their best to kill the invisible devil (COVID-19) while leaving the visible devil (dengue) without any harm. By now even the kindergarten children know that COVID-19 is a viral disease which spreads through droplets and air. It is airborne. How can we get rid of an airborne virus by cleaning the floor, walls, etc.? It is like giving medications prescribed for a cough when someone is having a fracture in the leg. What is important is ensuring proper ventilation for all classrooms in all schools by making all the required adjustments.
The other most dangerous fact connected to disinfecting and decontaminating floors, walls, etc., is that it gives a false sense of security to the children, teachers and all the others who move about inside the school premises. They may pay less attention to hand hygiene, social distancing and cough etiquette and respiratory hygiene, wearing masks, etc. which are of paramount importance all the time in the fight against COVID-19.
Spraying an individual or group with chemical disinfectants or detergents is physically and psychologically harmful and does not limit the spread of COVID-19. The useless and harmful Decontamination Chambers (DCs) have disappeared from many institutions in the country by now. It is a blessing. Otherwise definitely they will be established inside schools by uninformed individuals and groups and the schoolchildren will suffer from some other health issues such as allergies, respiratory problems, nausea, vomiting, skin cancer, etc.
The school authorities have missed the most important part of the cleaning process. It is having a regular system that cleans all surfaces daily which are touched by children intentionally and unintentionally such as doorknobs, hand rails, the top of chairs, hand rests, table tops, etc. Cleaning them once before starting the new school term is not adequate at all. They need to be cleaned daily, a few times a day if possible.
The other most important factor is wearing masks. Usually schoolchildren in lower grades play with masks and exchange them while in school and while travelling in school buses, vans, etc. There is no one to monitor such instances. The majority of young parents just want to send their children to schools in order to take a break from the one-and-a-half-year-long school ‘vacation’ and teachers have many other things to do in addition to teaching. It is the responsibility of educational authorities to find out a new system creatively in order to make sure that children wear their masks all the time and that they do not play with them.
The dengue mosquito
There is another very important fact that all school authorities and parents need to focus on. After one-and-a-half years, the children have come to school. They get together with their friends and children in other grades. Some of them can be from higher grades. Now is the time to experiment what they learned during the past one-and-a-half years. They can be positive things or may be negative things.
It is well known that without online classes many schoolchildren misused the Internet during the past few months. Even before that they had enough time and resources to go to the ‘dark areas’ of the Internet. There is no need to explain in detail what they are. Any adult can guess what those dark areas are. The children who went in to those dark areas on the Internet have now received the chance to experiment on what they watched and listened to. All the other schoolchildren who did not have Internet facilities or who limited their Internet browsing to educational activities need to be protected from those ‘adult minds’ inside child bodies. It was actually unspoiled children who left their schools in March last year but it will not be the same children who return to their schools this week. If educational authorities are creative enough they can use basic COVID-19 prevention guidelines such as social distancing to solve all those other issues.
But here in Sri Lanka at the moment, we cannot expect anything good or positive from the people because we have already witnessed how they misbehaved during the past few weeks before and after relaxing the travel restrictions. We saw how they brought COVID-19 home and infected their elderly parents. Some of the elderly even perished in the process. Then we saw how they infected their own children and filled the Lady Ridgeway Hospital (LRH) during the past. Telling such people even to wear their face masks properly is useless.
Now they move here and there freely with their elders and children as nothing had happened and there is no COVID-19 in Sri Lanka. Once another possible COVID-19 wave hits Sri Lanka in the near future, they will start to blame the Government, health authorities and law enforcement officers. Sometime ago we saw how some individuals slammed an employee of a filling station on the floor when he asked them to put their masks on.
Face masks must be worn at all times while in school.
Meanwhile, some non-vaccinated people are putting the lives of all the other people at risk. They don’t take the vaccine against COVID-19 giving various reasons but the real reasons are religious beliefs, various myths spreading on the social media and believing in Ayurvedic or herbal medications which have not been clinically tested. Some wait till a particular Western-made vaccine is offered to them.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has already stated that COVID-19 will continue in 2022 too due to the non-availability of COVID-19 vaccination for Africa, etc. No matter whether the entire world gets vaccinated or not, COVID-19 will exist in the world as long as Mother Nature wishes and fade away from the world when she decides. It is our duty to protect ourselves and our loved ones from COVID-19 until then.
But the bitter truth is that some of us very successfully did it so far while many others failed due to their sheer ignorance. There is no reason whatsoever for the health or law enforcement authorities to thank the people for contributing to controlling COVID-19. What we always do is blaming others for our own faults. No one can give another COVID-19 by force. We get infected with COVID and many other diseases due to our ignorant behaviour. That is our nature. But we can continue to live without dying or without watching our loved ones die from COVID-19 if we start to find our own faults instead of finding the faults of others.
This is very important because we Sri Lankans are yet to experience the bitter effects of other dangerous variants of COVID-19 such as Delta Plus which have been detected in many countries. Such new variants could make their way to Sri Lanka too as we cannot have restricted borders forever. Maybe the real deadly face of COVID-19 is yet to be seen by the ignorant people living here and all over the world.
– Daily News Sri Lanka
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