Individual Schools, Instead of All Schools, Might be Closed If a COVID-19 Cluster is Formed in a School

To understand why the school issue is such a bigly thing in Singapore, you need to know a bit of history.

Why Schools?

A long time ago before we knew Circuit Breaker wasn’t just a box at home, parents were worried about their kids going to school. Entertainment venues were closed, events were cancelled and IT shows were postponed, yet schools are still open.

At that time, PM Lee took to the stage to tell worried parents why schools cannot be closed. He said that schools are safe and places where kids learn to socialise and without schools, some kids might be at a disadvantage.

Fast forward to 7 April and suddenly, Singapore went into circuit breaker mode. Schools are closed and students have to study from their homes.

Now, after two whole months, parents are, once again, worried:

Wait, hundreds of new cases are being reported every single day. Why are people not allowed to go to work but kids can go to school? And most importantly, is it safe?

Education Minister Ong Ye Kung then took to the internet to explain why kids must go back to school.

And his entire argument can be summed up to: it’s for their mental well-being. He also assured parents with an elaborate look at the various precautionary measures being put into place.

Yet before everyone can sit down and digest for a bit, this happened:

5 School Covid-19 Cases Reported On 7 Jun & They’re All In Different Schools

Just a reminder: schools restarted on 2 June 2020.

Before people had time to speculate and panic after MOH’s press release, MOE released a statement of their own.

All of the cases have displayed mild symptoms, with the onset of symptoms being 3 June for 3 cases, and 2 June and 31 May for the remaining 2 cases.

Although they’ve all been tested positive, a second test shows that they’re negative instead. It’s therefore likely that they were infected before school reopens.

It’s unknown if they’re past infections whereby they’re just shedding minute fragments of the virus RNA picked by the PCR test, which is no longer transmissible and infective to others.

Their point? The schools are not clusters and they were infected before school reopened.

Yes, now you get why schools are such hot issues in Singapore now?

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Now that we’re done with the rather lengthy history lesson, let’s go to the main meat of the article:

Individual Schools, Instead of All Schools, Might be Closed If a COVID-19 Cluster is Formed in a School

Education Minister Ong Ye Kung was asked if there’s a possibility that schools will be closed again if the number of infected students hit a certain threshold.

Yes, he said, but not as a whole.

Only when there’s a “cluster” within that school will they close the school. He added that they will not let the situation get to such a stage.

One way of curbing the spread of transmission is to step up testing on school staff and students.

MOE confirms that they’re also doing surveillance testing for COVID-19 for all school staff and students above the age of 12 who are diagnosed with acute respiratory infection (ARI) at first presentation to a doctor, instead of only for those with prolonged symptoms.

They’ve started doing that on 2 June 2020, the first day of school reopening for school staff and older students with ARI symptoms.

Students below 12 years old and below will only be tested if they persistently display respiratory symptoms, as swabbing may be uncomfortable for them and requires healthcare professionals with special expertise.

This, he says, allows them to detect positive cases and isolate them earlier, curbing the transmission among students.

Remember the five confirmed cases?

29 staff and 100 students who were identified as contacts of the cases have been issued with either a 14-day Leave of Absence (LOA) or a Home Quarantine Order (HQO).

For people on HQO, they’ll be swabbed twice, once at the start and once at the end of their quarantine.

Why Are The Schools Still Open?

Another logical question that people are interested in: so now you know that this school has a positive case. Why is it still open?

Mr Ong says that they’ve determined that the students were likely infected before they returned to school, so there is no transmission within the premises.

As long as they can detect cases earlier and quarantine them as fast as possible, daily life is still possible.