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Parents urge Sabah govt to reconsider guidelines on schools closure

KOTA KINABALU: Parents of school-going children are hoping the Sabah government will reconsider the guidelines on closing schools to contain Covid-19 infection.

Yesterday, state Covid-19 spokesperson Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said if there are at least two people, irrespective of whether they are students, teachers or staff testing positive for Covid-19, the school will have to close for seven days.

Entrepreneur Anne Antah said instead of closing the entire school, the closure should be confined to the affected classes only.

"Parents have to closely monitor their children. If family members in the house are sick, conduct self-test and quarantine. Do not send their children to school. Be considerate to other children.

"It is enough that kids did not go to school for two years (due to the movement control order). If they continue to stay at home or just do online learning, the children will be stressed out," said the mother of primary school children.

Another parent Fardy Bungga also echoed that the school should not be closed entirely as it will affect the learning process.

"If the students are asked to be on online learning only (during the closure), not all of them can follow.

"The focus of study will be disrupted as compared to attending classes physically," he said, adding school closure should only be done should the number of cases go beyond an uncontrollable situation.

A nurse, who declined to be named, also said the total closure does not justify the vaccination efforts to allow people to go back to normal lives.

"Covid-19 will not be gone, it has become like the common flu. Furthermore, now there is also a vaccination for the children aged 5 and 11 by the Health Ministry.

"Whoever gets infected by Covid-19, let the students (or staff) undergo quarantine. Just like the hand foot and mouth disease that requires seven days quarantine," said the mother of a 13-year-old.

Since the reopening of the schooling session last month, Sabah saw more than 10 education-related Covid-19 clusters which mostly involved boarding schools.

Yesterday, with four new education clusters, it doubled the number of cases to 909 but 99 per cent of them are under categories 1 and 2.

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