A STUDENT of The Bishops’ High School tested positive for COVID-19 at the weekend, following separate incidents where two teachers at two other schools in Region Four also tested positive for the virus last week.
According to reports, on Thursday last, the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) of The Bishops’ High School, had become worried about a situation developing at the school, after a teacher reported sick and some students showed symptoms similar to those common to the COVID-19. A message was subsequently sent out and circulated among students and parents.

“The PTA Executive is concerned and has discussed the risks of having students in school at this time. In the interim, we believe that it is necessary to take the most basic precaution against the risks, and are asking parents to consider keeping their children at home. Teachers will be asked to revert to teaching online, in the interest of all concerned,” the message read.
Subsequently, according to reports, many of the students did not turn up on Friday, and many of the teachers took to online teaching.
“The statement was sent out Thursday night and Friday there was limited turn out to school. We don’t know if what was in the statement was true or false, but because of its content obviously it would have scared students, and scared parents into keeping their children at home,” a teacher from the school noted.

Prior to the situation at Bishops’, last week, teachers from the St Rose’s High and Diamond Secondary, tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. Testing was carried out at each school on Friday last based on contact tracing of persons who would have been in contact with the teachers.
Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, had confirmed the cases at St Rose’s and Diamond on Friday.
“A teacher tested positive at St Rose’s and a teacher tested positive at Diamond Secondary. So both schools were called in to manage the issue, and both schools had testing done on site at the schools. It was determined who the contact tracing would be done with based on interviews with the teachers, and who the teachers would’ve been in touch with,” the minister noted.
“Whatever the [Ministry of Health] advised is what we did, so if a student would not have been in contact with a teacher then there would’ve been no need to test that student, so we followed the advice,” Manickchand said.