Covid test positivity ratio yielded a predictable 17.48 per cent on Monday on a small sample base of 89,722 usual for the latest ending week even as daily new cases came in at 15,692 and deaths dipped to below 100 to 92. Active case pool and hospital admissions have continued to decline.

It is this increasingly predictable nature of the Covid graph that has prompted the State government to look at the prospect of reopening of schools, higher education institutions and professional colleges eliciting evoked mixed reactions from public heatlh experts and Covid specialists.

Caution is best advised

Dr Anish TS, Member of the Covid Task Force, Kerala, says it would be wise to open schools after daily numbers reduce to a lower level lest an evolving situation requires administrators to shut them down in the subsequent two weeks since they did not observe utmost caution while exercising the option.

Opening of schools throws up its own challenges. School is a universal phenomenon and, on an average, at least one member of each family is in school at a given time. So, any super spreader event triggered in a school could affect not just the students but also the families they come back to every day.

Parents, drivers and staff of school vans/buses, teaching and non-teaching staff at school are all at risk. The virus takes no time to transmit to the larger community with its pool of unvaccinated and co-morbid persons and triggers a large-scale spread. Schools can morph into transmission hubs in no time.

Phase roll-out needed

Dr SS Lal, Professor and Head-Public Health, Global Institute of Public Health, Thiruvananthapuram, who has had a stint with the WHO at many locations abroad, told BusinessLine from Geneva (where he is on a sabbatical) that he has been consistently arguing for opening schools.

"It should not be an all-or-none kind of decision but needs to be rolled out in a phased manner. Kids should get back their experience of schools and get to socialise. But strangely, teachers have been airing to me questions as to how syllabus can be finished if classes are held on alternate days," Lal said.

"People are worried about finishing the syllabus. This is absurd. Students, parents and teachers must realise that education is not just about massing up students in classrooms and finishing syllabus cover-to-cover. They are fixated about syllabus, which is mostly eschewed in schools abroad."

Offline and online streams

It can be two days a week for primary classes to begin with, Lal suggested. Or engage alternate batches on alternate days. Both offline and online streams may be run simultaneously. Kids need to socialise if only to prevent childhood depression. Not many doctors are aware that children can go into a depression or develop behavioural abnormalities, he said.

Full reopening of schools is unthinkable when there is a regional surge, according to Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, Vice-Chairman, Research Cell, Indian Medical Association, Kerala. Not least when the state is trying its best to protect the health-care system from an overload of sick patients.

Teachers and other staff members should be vaccinated in advance. Jayadevan too agrees that classrooms can be potential mass spreading zones because many people share the space for several hours, and conversation generates tiny invisible droplets that remain in the air for a long time.

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