Can I send my child back to school?
Probably that is the question most of the parents would have, at this time of Corona pandemic.
Is it safe to send my child back to school? This is question in their mind that worries, most parents.
Total lockdown is slowly being relaxed at the moment and slowly we seem to be returning back to normal life. In India, apart from a few, most of the shops are open. Public transport will resume back anytime soon, we guess. The parents, the school management, the Public health department, the Department of health and the rest of the government administration are discussing about when to open the school back up. They all have a same concern as the parents, regarding the safety of the children.
So how to move on?
On what basis people can make the right decision on reopening of schools?
Obviously, it should be based on scientific evidence and data that we have so far from India and the world over. The reason for the Big worry is that some of the viral infections such as “Flu” starts first from the school going children and spread to the community. And the effect could be devastating. Which is why when the COVID-19 started spreading initially, people were very concerned with the possibility of wild spread to the community, through school going children. And hence schools in most countries were shutdown.
Now it has been more than 50 days since the shutdown of schools in India. It is quite clear from the available evidence that school children are not the culprit,that spreading the Covid -19. It is interesting to note that less than 1% of total population affected by Covid-19 are constituted by children. In other words among hundred affected people we could only see one child. The rest are adults. The other interesting observation is that, even those children affected, the illness appears to be mild. It is an excellent news, isn’t it?
So, it very much looks like it is pretty safe to allow children to go back to School. It is also the fact that many of the countries in the world have never shut down their schools in the first place. Good examples are Taiwan and Australia. They manage to continue with their education at school and only did they intervened when positive cases came about. And that has been shown to be a very successful and safe strategy. Everyone knows that the of the illness has been quite mild in most part of India, even for the adults. We have managed to to overcome the school absence with online education provided by the schools so far. However, it is no match for going to school and learn the things at school. Looking at the evidence all around the world and in India, it is sensible to start the schools back again.
It is our hope that our government and the administration will take a sensible decision soon. Let us co-operate and support the government on this matter. Let us be watchful and careful , But Let us move on.
