Thousands of Guyanese children tested positive for COVID-19

MORE THAN 4,000 GUYANESE CHILDREN HAVE CONTRACTED THE CORONA
VIRUS since the highly contagious and deadly disease was first detected here in March 2020
according to local health statistics.
Children comprise some 16 percent of the country’s population which have contracted the virus
detected first in late 2019 in Wuhan, China. Since then, some 4.5 million persons around the
world have died from the virus and among them, 609 of the 24, 967 Guyanese who contracted
the disease here.
The global pandemic has forced the closure of schools in Guyana contributing to significant
“learning loss” Education Minister, Ms. Priya Manickchand revealed late last week.
The ministry of education is also blaming the 17-months long closure of schools for the
substantial number of dropouts among secondary school students, which minister Manickchand
has warned will have serious implications for the society in another 10 years.
“We are aware that high school children did not write CXC (the Caribbean Secondary Education
Certificate [CSEC] offered by the regional examining body the Caribbean Examinations Council
[CXC]) and left prematurely. We are trying to track (them) down and bring (them) back into the
formal education system to make sure that they leave with skills that make them marketable and
employable and productive members of our country,” Manickchand said.
There are still mixed public reactions here to the government’s recent decision to reopen schools
nationwide on September 06 even as health minister, Dr Frank Anthony, publicly admits to
spikes in contractions and hospitalisation linked to the deadly, contagious virus.
Minister Manickchand criticises public calls to keep schools closed as short-term thinking.

“If we keep schools closed it is because we want to take the easy way out. Easy is always nice,
so trust me when I say it’s very tempting. So, if we don’t open schools, we will never have to
answer why a child gets sick. We don’t have the luxury of doing what is easy right now. “
“Leadership,” the minister argued, “requires a decision that is in the best interest of the people
that you swore to serve and sometimes that will come with risks, and one of the risks is that a
child whose parent didn't not get vaccinated and was careless at a party last night infects that
child”.
“We have to balance staying out of school and avoid the responsibility of a child becoming ill.
Frank Anthony…said to you very clearly that over the past year over 4000 children contracted
COVID virus. Over the last year we have closed schools so they (children) didn’t get it from
school, they got that from home, parents and communities,” she counselled.
Manickchand reasoned, that calls to keep school doors closed “makes everybody's work…a lot
easier.”
“It gives us nothing to open these schools, but it’s the right thing to do and its necessary at this
point. Those of us who believe in a Higher Being have to believe that it will be wrong in his eyes
if we didn’t do what is right; and we are doing this and we trying to do it safely and carefully,”
Manickchand reiterated.
“We are also saying to parents that whether you send your child or not, it’s a choice that you
have to personally make. In these personal circumstances, the Ministry of Education will not be
engaging truancy officers to go behind children who didn’t come to school. What we will try to
ensure is that as parents decide that they want to keep their children home for their own peculiar
reasons, we are going to respect that, and we are going to try hard to ensure that those children
are engaged. But we are leaving the door open. For parents who do not wish to send their
children to school, we are leaving that option open to them,” the minister explained.
She reiterated the need for every category of Guyanese to take the jab as a demonstration
that we are “responsible as a people.”