• 21/12/2022
• By wizewebsite
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Covid in Prague schools: Even half of the classes are in quarantine, ensuring teaching is difficult<

For example, 11 out of 24 teachers are now sick at the Elementary School at St. Stephen's in Prague 2. According to the principal, Jana Páčová, they all fell ill after risky contact with an infected person outside the school. Otherwise, the school has an agreement that teachers still wear respirators, she said. According to her, due to the large absence of pedagogues, even those who otherwise work part-time had to be fully involved in the teaching. "We have experience that teachers are almost always really sick (with covid-19), they have fevers, while pupils don't have that," she said. According to her, at the beginning of the week, seven of the eight classes of the second grade remained in quarantine, four of them after the ski course.

Páčová described the situation after ski training as the worst. Even though all the students, including the vaccinated, went to it with a negative PCR test, in the following days they started to have symptoms of the disease and the course had to end prematurely. The director then asked the parents to have the children tested again using the PCR method. According to her, the disease manifests itself gradually among the pupils, so even after the end of the five-day quarantine, not all of them can return yet.

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"Instead of 24 students, we have seven physically in the classroom, and for us this option is even worse than leaving the students for online classes," she said. According to her, it is now extremely difficult to provide education. "For example, I have to teach five hours and I teach 15 in a week in a hybrid way, where I have, for example, seven children in school and the rest of the class in online classes," she described.

Six classes out of 23 at the Náměstí Svobody Elementary School in Prague 6 are now also under quarantine. However, there are only five staff members missing out of roughly 100. "I think things are already stagnating. It was even worse, we had like eight or nine classes in quarantine at one point. That was sometime at the end of last week," said director Michaela Rybářová. According to her, some classes get quarantined repeatedly, which infuriates parents. She added that classes go into quarantine after risky contact with an infected person, not after Monday's antigen testing.

Test-to-stay

In the event that a student starts to have symptoms of illness in the middle of the week and the antigen test comes out at home, the school still uses the test-to-stay system, said Rybářová. The class is then tested every day and masks are also worn in class until the result of the sick person's PCR test is clear. The class goes into quarantine when the infection is confirmed. According to the spokesperson of the Ministry of Education, Aneta Lednová, the test-to-stay system in schools ended when, from January 17, the regular testing of pupils with antigen tests was reduced from twice to once a week. According to Rybářová, however, no one from the ministry revoked this system.

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Two classes are now in quarantine at ZŠ Olešská in Prague 10. Even in this school, all pedagogues wear respirators everywhere, so that they are not affected by the quarantine in the event of an infection. Five school employees are sick, so they are in isolation. "This complicates the situation, but it does not paralyze it yet," said director Petra Rohlíčková. According to her, the situation was already worse. The school has approximately 50 teachers.

The situation is even better at ZŠ Vratislavova in Prague 2. There is currently no class or teacher in quarantine there, only individual pupils remain at home, said director Jiří Trunda. These are cases of children who had a positive test after Monday's regular testing or who are at home with sick parents, he explained. Therefore, according to him, so-called hybrid teaching now works in some classes, where teachers have the computer camera on and teach both those present and those who are online at the same time. The school has 16 classes and 30 teachers. Last week the situation at the school was comparable to now, in the past months it was sometimes worse, he concluded.

News from the government: 30 days after covid no quarantine and restrictions on the validity of vaccination certificates Blesk Zprávy / ČTK