• The county government has linked all the schools with health workers who will offer the required guidance.
• The county has so far recorded 476 cases and seven deaths.
Image: WANGECHI WANG’ONDU
The Kirinyaga government has focused its covid-19 prevention on schools as they reopen to avert spread of the virus.
The county has so far recorded 476 cases and seven deaths. A total of 21 patients have so far recovered from its isolation centre, while others have recovered under the home-based-care programme.
Currently, the isolation centre has no patient. Four are, however, recovering under the home-based care programme.
Health executive Gladys Kimingi has said to contain the virus, there will be continuous sensitisation in schools and monitoring to ensure laid-down guidelines are followed.
“About 200 teachers have been reached, while students from about 60 schools have been sensitised in the past month when the county’s Department of Health embarked on an accelerated Covid-19 prevention campaign‚” Kimingi said.
She said the county government has linked all the schools with health workers who will offer the required guidance and ensure they follow the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health.
The department has also come up with a reporting template for Covid-19 suspected cases in schools. They are supposed to be filled by school heads and submitted to the subcounty Covid-19 multiagency team through the public health officer.
The template captures the student’s details such as the symptoms exhibited and the facility to which they are referred.
She advised that any student suspected to have Covid-19 should be taken to the nearest health facility where they will be reviewed and referred accordingly should they meet the case definition of the disease.
On Wednesday, the county’s Department of Education held a sensitisation meeting for all polytechnic principals, early childhood development and education (ECDE) subcounty officers and ward administrators.
The officers were taken through guidelines and school reopening directives, which they were asked to implement.
Education executive Joseph Kinyua said all the county’s 198 ECDE centres have reopened, while the 15 polytechnics in the county will be reopened next week.
Polytechnic principals are members of the zonal Covid-19 committees.
Kinyua said the extra classrooms constructed last year in some ECDE centres and polytechnics will go a long way in enhancing the capacity of the institutions to fight the virus.
He said that during the last financial year, the county government constructed five ECDE classrooms and renovated 26 others, while this year, several new classrooms will also be built under the ward-based development programme.
The county has also built an additional 20 classrooms and two dormitories to expand the capacity of the youth polytechnics in the last three years.
The CEC said pupils from ECDE centres will benefit from free face masks in a consignment of 140,000 masks set to be distributed by the county government to schoolchildren.
The masks are produced by the Department of Gender at the county’s Kaitheri Apparel Factory in Kerugoya.
He urged schools staff, parents and pupils to play their part in the fight against the virus both in school and outside school.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris