Coronavirus: How other countries reopened schools

When Uganda shut down schools in March, the country had not registered a single positive case of Covid-19.
As of yesterday morning, days after President Museveni announced that schools will reopen to candidates and finalists on October 15, the official number of positive cases that had been recorded in the country stood at 7,064 and 70 deaths. 

Authorities project that the rate of infection will rise since community spread is deemed to be high in several  parts of the country.  
It is at this point when reality hits home. The persistent nature of Covid-19 and the delay in developing a vaccine or cure for it means prevention through hiding from the coronavirus that causes the disease was bound to collapse at some point.
 
With the benefit of hindsight, some countries that did not adopt strict lockdown measures to prevent the spread of the virus can even claim to have been foresighted. 
Closer to home, Burundi, for instance, never shut down schools and many aspects of the economy remained open.
Tanzania, Uganda’s neighbour to the south, only shut down schools for three months and reopened them at the end of June, with much of its economy remaining open for most of the time its neighbours were under lockdown.
 
On the other hand, Rwanda and Kenya are the other East African countries that adopted strict approaches to handling the threat posed by Covid-19, in many ways comparable to what Uganda did. In Rwanda, the government had set September as the month for reopening schools – after about six months of them being shut down – and the date for reopening has since been further deferred with no new date set yet.
 In Kenya, the debate on reopening schools rages on, with October 19 set as the tentative date for schools to resume business. 

According to the tentative programme for reopening schools in Kenya, all learners will return to school between October 19 and early November. 
For Uganda’s case, however, the focus for reopening is on only candidate classes in primary and secondary schools, and finalists in tertiary institutions, including universities. 
Other learners are to continue learning from home, with President Museveni saying government will review the situation in January next year. 
There is no definitive data to help resolve the debate on whether shutting down schools in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya helped to slow down the spread of Covid-19, or keeping schools open for the most part speeded up the spread and worsened its impact in Burundi and Tanzania. 

Farther adrift, the picture is mixed. Israel adopted measures akin to what Uganda did – including shutting down schools – which helped it suppress the spread of Covid-19 for about half a year, to the extent that it was confident enough to reopen schools in May.
Then hell broke loose. Whereas the reopening of schools was done while emphasising use of facemasks and social distancing, the numbers of Covid-19 surged across the country.  

 Then on Thursday this week, al Jazeera online reported: “Israel will reinstate a strict new countrywide lockdown this week amid a stubborn surge in coronavirus cases. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the announcement in a televised speech. Beginning Friday, the eve of the Jewish New Year, schools, restaurants, malls and hotels, among other businesses, will shut down and restrictions on movement will be imposed. The lockdown is expected to last at least three weeks, when measures may be eased depending on morbidity.”

Japan has been lauded as a model as far as reopening schools is concerned. When they reopened in June, the authorities allowed different schools to vary strategies to keep learners ad teachers safe, but a general rule that cuts across the country is that learners attend classes on alternate days, which ensures social distancing in classrooms.

Different reports show that whereas there have been reported infections of students after the schools resumed, the cases have remained low and manageable.   
Then there is the case of Uruguay, which has caught the attention of many. It has kept infection numbers low despite having reopened schools quite early into the pandemic. 
The country adopted a phased reopening schedule, starting with schools in rural areas where the numbers of learners are relatively small. These were followed by the economically vulnerable learners who were struggling to access learning online, and then finally learners in capital Montevideo were allowed back in class at the end of June.
   
And then there is the case of Sweden, which never closed schools at all to its one million learners. It is only students who are 16 and older that were required to stay home and learn remotely. One controversial policy the Swedish government adopted was to encourage the use of masks and social distancing but letting it remain optional in line with their government’s emphasis on personal choice.
Bob Spires, an assistant professor of Education at the University of Richmond, United States, wrote that there was no significant difference between Sweden and its neighbours that adopted stricter guidelines.  
  
Mr Spires wrote: “Sweden’s plan seems to have been safe enough. Its health agency reported on July 15 that Covid-19 outbreaks among Sweden’s one million school children were no worse than those in neighboring Finland, which did close schools. And pediatricians have seen few severe Covid-19 cases among school-age children in Stockholm. Only one young Swedish child is believed to have died of the coronavirus as of this article’s publication.”

Key arguments
Explaining the decision to reopen schools to finalists, President Museveni on September 20 said the finalists had to resume school or else they would clog the system. 
Mr Museveni said: “…the cost of waiting any further [without reopening schools to finalists] is quite high. Why? It is because of the jam that will be created in terms of the usual transition from the primary school, lower secondary schools, higher secondary schools, tertiary colleges and universities, respectively. If the batch of 2020 do not move on, what will happen to the batch of 2021? Can we afford to have two batches in 2021? The answer is a clear “no”.” 

The President added that reopening to only finalists can be done safely since they are not so many, accounting for only 1.2m learners out of an estimated total of 15m learners who are enrolled in all institutions of learning in Uganda. 
Reopening schools to learners is a subject of intense discussion across the world. Sophie Bushwick, an editor at Scientific American, wrote an article entitled “Schools have no good options for reopening during Covid-19”. 
Her country of interest was the United States, where there is a big fallout over allowing learners back in schools for face-to-face classes. 

Ms Bushwick, in weighing the options, wrote: “Whether children attend classrooms or learn remotely at home, each option carries a risk of harm to students, their families and the adults who work with them. The novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can spread through the enclosed halls and classrooms of a school building. But prolonged reliance on virtual learning alone may disrupt a child’s educational and social development and can have serious longer-term economic repercussions.”

Beyond the fear of potential spikes in infections due to the reopening of schools, Ms Bushwick touches on the other key aspect that many other commentators have thrown about – the potential impact of prolonged stay out of school. 
Political activist Kizza Besigye, a medical doctor who does weekly briefings on the fight against Covid-19, says reopening Ugandan schools to only candidate classes and finalists in higher institutions of learning is a wrong strategy. 

He asserts that the actual Covid-19 situation in the country is much worse than the official numbers suggest. He argues that there is limited testing, with the government currently testing only those who show symptoms and contacts of those who test positive for Covid-19, with hardly any random testing taking place across the country. If random testing were to be carried out in different parts of Kampala, for example, Dr Besigye argues, the Covid-19 positive cases would be much higher than the current figures show.

Basing on this analysis, it would appear that the logical thing to do would be to keep schools shut. But Dr Besigye says all school-going children should be allowed to return to school immediately.
In the first place, he argues, “children are far less seriously affected by Covid-19. Most who get infected don’t develop symptoms.” 

He adds that part of the reason Covid-19 isn’t killing Ugandans as much as it has killed people in Europe is the demographic difference, because Uganda has majority children and a much smaller portion of older people. 
In addition to children being less adversely affected by Covid-19, Dr Besigye says that a big portion of Uganda’s children are more vulnerable to contracting Covid-19 while at home since many of them mix freely in their crowded communities. 

He explains that many face severe food insecurity at home, which exposes them to being malnourished and stunted, and more vulnerable to Covid-19 and other illnesses. 
But, we point out to him, the children who face malnutrition at home will very likely still face it even when schools are reopened since their parents will still be responsible for feeding them.

Dr Besigye retorts: “Once back to school, the government should focus on feeding all the children, and feeding them well. Even if it means borrowing to feed the children, that would be good borrowing, to save the future of our country”. 
Feeding schoolgoing children by the government has been a longstanding debate, with the government arguing that it cannot afford the cost and the parents should feed their children while at school.   
 
The third threat that Dr Besigye says children face due to prolonged stay at home is vices such as defilement and others. Different organisations have reported that a number of schoolgoing children have been impregnated during the period they have stayed out of school.
We put it to Dr Besigye, as some have argued, that schools should at least be reopened for the rest of the learners at the start of next year. 

In fact, President Museveni said on September 20 that the rest of the learners would keep learning from home, emphasizing that the government is in the process of procuring 9m radio sets for distribution to families to facilitate distance learning, with a solution on the rest of the children to return to school deferred to January of next year.  
To this thinking, Dr Besigye said: “What change do you expect to have taken place by January or February next year? The only strategic change will be caused by having a vaccine [for Covid-19], which won’t be there by then, hence the need to establish a new normal now [by opening up the country and schools to all learners]”. 

Days before President Museveni announced that schools would reopen, Dr Besigye through his address on Facebook and Twitter called for the reopening of schools to all learners, reopening of borders and the airport and removal of virtually all the restrictions that were announced to prevent the spread of Covid-19.  He argued that there nothing to guard against since the virus is already within the communities, and the only thing Ugandans have to do is to build up their immunity and observe preventive measures, especially wearing face masks, washing or sanitising hands and social distancing.    

ISSUE
Rwanda
In Rwanda, the government had set September as the month for reopening schools – after about six months of them being shut down – and the date for reopening has since been further deferred with no new date set yet.
Kenya
In Kenya, the debate on reopening schools rages on, with October 19 set as the tentative date for schools to resume business.

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