AMMAN — Students
and parents have been voicing concerns about the continuity of classroom
education after more than 2,000
COVID-19 cases have been recorded since the
return to schools, coupled with growing uncertainties over the vaccination of
children under 18 years of age.
اضافة اعلان
Lamia
Al-Abdallah, a mother of a school student, told
Jordan News that she will
not consent to vaccinating her children anytime soon, not wishing to subject
them to the side effects she endured. “I
felt fatigued with a fever that lasted for couple of days, and I am in my
mid-thirties but still suffered the side effects, so how would the children
feel?” She said many of her friends and colleagues share the same view about
the vaccine, adding that the best decision the government should consider, in
the meantime, is to return to online learning.
Abdallah
also urged strict control over the recommended safety measures at schools, mainly
to keep on the facemasks, respect physical distancing and sanitize constantly, noting
that she has often seen no compliance when she picked her children up from
school.
Adopting
the same approach, Mahmoud Al-Deiri, a father, told
Jordan News that the
government should reconsider returning to online learning immediately,
especially in light of understandable concerns among parents and children, more
so after the emergence of the new variant Omicron. “Those are children; they want to play, shake
hands and engage with others, and cannot adhere to safety measures.”
Discouraged
about allowing his children to get vaccinated, Deiri said he would only consent
if children’s vaccination became mandatory. “I don’t believe in the efficiency of the vaccine to protect children
against the virus,” he admitted, hoping the government would rather resort to
online learning than force the vaccine on children.
Member of
the
Epidemiology Committee Mohammad Nsour said that students are encouraged to
get vaccinated, assuring that vaccines are totally safe and have proven their
efficacy. The target age group, he said, is children aged 12-17 years, “not
only to protect themselves but also their families and friends.”
A source
from the Ministry of Education told
Jordan News that masks and hygiene are
distributed to students to help protect and ensure their safety. The source said
if children showed any of the illness symptoms, they would be requested to take
a few-days of house rest and get a negative PCR test before returning to
school, adding that there should be no concern about school attendance by
either parents or students.
He urged
“not to pay attention to rumours” and assured that the ministry takes its decisions
based on the interest of students, while ruling out a return to online
learning.
Monday
recorded the highest number of COVID-19 infection, with 2000 cases among
students and 258 among teachers, according to the secretary-general of the
Ministry of Education for Administrative and Financial Affairs, Najwa Qubailat.
Nationwide,
Jordan ranked 16th globally and first in the Arab world in the number of COVID-19
cases receiving hospital care, while it came 39th globally and second in the
Arab world with active cases, according to the worldometers website.
The
number of COVID-19 related fatalities has risen to 11,584 since the start of
the pandemic, and until the writing of the report, 58,530 laboratory tests were
conducted, with a positive test rate of 9.67 percent.
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