Closure of schools supported by experts

Closure of schools supported by experts

The council of health experts fully supports the actions of regional public health authorities leading towards suspension of full-time teaching in schools, reads a joint statement they published on Thursday. "Regional hygienists know the local situation and it is their duty and mission to take all necessary measures to save lives, including short-term preventive suspension of full-time teaching," stressed the experts. The consilium claims that it is aware of the problems that the suspension of teaching in classrooms at schools brings with it. However, it also points to the catastrophic epidemic situation, the collapse of hospitals and parents' fears for the health of their children. "No ideal solutions are available to us today. We ourselves suggested a short-term suspension of full-time teaching two weeks ago," they said, adding it should have lasted for seven workdays and should have been country-wide.

The senior coalition OLaNO party welcomed the opinion of the council of health experts on the closure of schools by regional public health offices. OLaNO condemned the behaviour of its coalition partner, the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party, calling it irresponsible". "Each infected member of a class generates other positive cases in the children's neighbourhood, and they become coronavirus superspreaders," said Eva Horvathova (OLaNO), a member of the parliamentary health committee. Head of the parliamentary economic committee Peter Kremsky (OLaNO) called on SaS to stop fighting with experts. In the current situation, he considers this to be not only irresponsible, but also extremely dangerous. "We saw a year ago where this populism led. Disrespectful labelling of meetings with experts as chattering and chronic attacking the measures taken led to the public being uncertain and weakened the whole government effort," he said. SaS said it will not respond to the words of its coalition partner.

According to experts, no classroom can be called absolutely safe at the moment. They say that children and youth are the strongest vector of the infection's spread at the moment.

Source: TASR

Martina Šimkovičová, Photo: TASR

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