Former deputy health minister Dr Lee Boon Chye said colour-coding Covid-19 zones is no longer sufficient or useful, as zones often cover a wide area, making closing all schools in a red zone impractical.
“We need to know the exact locations or communities with active spreads of the virus, so schools can make decisions based on where their students and teachers come from,” he told FMT.
He was commenting on a call by the Sarawak Teachers’ Union for the education ministry to close all schools in the red zones immediately as the number of teachers being infected and quarantined has gone up since the wide-scale reopening of schools last month.
Lee said teachers and parents are worried because they are not confident about the standard operating procedures in schools.
He said the education ministry is only focusing on SOPs and has failed to realise the need to reform the education system, such as reducing schooling days and introducing more activities and a syllabus that allows students to learn outside the classroom.
He said students can attend school for two or three days while continuing their online learning or do their work at home on the remaining days.
He also urged the ministry not to assume that things are going to return to normal immediately after the pandemic, but to act promptly.
Meanwhile, Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) president Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim also disagreed with the closure of all schools in red zones, as learning would be disrupted again.
She said it is not necessary to close all schools in the red zones unless there is a shortage of manpower.
“Parents should always exercise discretion and decide not to send their children to school if the risk of infection of a particular school or area is high,” she said.
Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) president Dr Subramaniam Muniandy, however, said schools in Sarawak’s red zones should close and revert to online learning due to the surge of Covid-19 cases.
He said the schools should only reopen when the infectivity rate (R0) falls to under 1.0 and the number of new Covid-19 daily cases drops to double or single digits.
“Allow only school children without gadgets and internet access to attend face-to-face lessons but with strict SOPs,” he said.
He also said the health ministry should rope in private doctors to conduct mass screening in targeted areas to control the spread of Covid-19 in Sarawak.
On Tuesday, health minister Dr Adham Baba said the infectivity rate in Sarawak had increased to 1.1, higher than the national figure of 1.06.
The state’s daily toll of Covid-19 cases has been among the highest in the nation in recent days.
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