THE EDITOR: I write with a heavy heart as I cannot believe so much money is being spent on Carnival, in aspects that do not preserve our culture, but only fuel the vice of party and wine and jam - the pods. I am in utter disbelief that our hard-earned taxpayers' money is being spent on a few hours of partying, whereas the process for our children being back to school has not yet been fine-tuned, with all the potential costs identified.
One of these potential major costs is covid19 home test kits. In the preparation for schoolchildren to return to school, other countries have put the emphasis on being tested rather than vaccinated. Hence families are being offered the cheaper at-home test kits (free of charge) should a student develop symptoms. In this way the contagion is mitigated.
My family of eight could not afford to wait on the public system, nor could we afford the antigen testing for everyone, so we got the home test kits, which are almost identical to the antigen at less than half the cost.
Part of the process of any system returning effectively and efficiently in these days is mitigating the contagion, and the period that people need to be away. Knowledge is power, so allowing our families to know and act based on their own symptoms, or others that they may have had contact with, will empower families with students and also teachers to function more confidently and effectively.
The Government needs to spend money wisely. Our schools are among the first establishments where all are returning together, so we need to make them work. This should be the example for everyone to follow, so apart from the actual logistics of schoolchildren returning in phases, the actual protocols of the children - and teachers - exhibiting symptoms should be indicated.
It is quite unfortunate that the process, as we understand it, has overlapped with the district nurse (which is seeming to take many days, due to the volume of cases) and delaying the process, especially for those who were first-line contacts.
If there can now be options for families to obtain these test kits free of charge, once the child has symptoms, and thereby test positive or negative in a more timely fashion, less disruption will take place, and the relevant action can be implemented in a more timely basis.
As parents, we would think that this consideration would be of a higher priority than provision for a massive safe-zone party in pods. I may be mistaken, but I thought the future of our nation lay in our children's school bags, not in the Savannah.
TONIA LEACOCK
via e-mail
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