Ntsoaki Motaung
For almost two years now Lesotho’s education has been on an almost sabbatical with most pupils going to school every other day as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Regardless of the fact that Covid-19 cases as well as deaths have been dropping, the education sector has continued on a perpetual move to disregard educations even when almost everything else has been permitted to operate at optimum occupancy.
This follows government’s move to have children aged 12 years to 17 years also be permitted to take up their doses of covid-19 vaccines.
According to the National Covid-19 Secretariat (NACOSEC), their statistician has shown that only 1925 children are fully vaccinated, meaning they have taken their two doses of Pfizer.
The Acting Chief Executive Officer of NACOSEC Thabo Ntoi indicated that what helps most for the government to take a decision to open for other categories are the levels of vaccination.
“People who had the opportunity to vaccinate in large numbers are adults, in statistics only a small proportion is children are fully vaccinated. That means it is easy to relax restrictions in other sectors than schools where most of the population there is not vaccinated,†he said.
Ntoi said it is a need for the country to look sensitively before they could relax restrictions in schools. There has to be other measures in place other than vaccines to help make schools safe place to go.
The CEO stated that at the moment NACOSEC together with the Ministry of Education are working towards developing other measures that could be placed in schools before going back to normal operating ways in schools.
He indicated that, for epidemic week four there has been a decline of cases with mild severity and minimal deaths.
“9,341 specimens were tested, 117 came back positive, 639 recoveries were recorded and also three deaths were verified. Improving confirmed recoveries at 67%, Decreasing and sustained minimal deaths, below 5% control mode of the virus and in total 913,076 (57%) of the population is vaccinated,†he said.
Last week, in his national address on the status of the country’s Covid-19 situation the Prime Minister technically announced that everything was going back to normal as even the curfew was lifted completely.
