The Ghana Education Service (GES) has said it has trained 52,000 teachers to help curb the spread of COVID-19 in schools across the country.

The Director of GES, Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa said, the Service is also implementing a number of policies to ensure a safer learning environment in schools.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa further added that adequate PPE has been supplied to various public schools.

The Director-General made this known when he outlined a number of interventions being rolled out to contain the spread of COVID-19 in schools at the Information Ministry’s COVID-19 press briefing.

“We have done a number of things. We launched an official back to school campaign at Mantse Agbona to educate, inform and get people to know that schools are reopening. Also, we, last week visited schools as part of the International Day for Education in a bid to get people back to school. We are also working with the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Health to run a couple of adverts and programmes on-air on the dos and don’ts as far as school reopening is concerned.”

“As part of ensuring that we abide by the protocols, we have also worked with the Ghana Health Service to map all schools to various health centres and health facilities such that whenever there is an issue even beyond the COVID-19, schools have been told where to seek any assistance. We have trained about 52,000 of our key staff and school helps who work with the GHS to ensure that the information is also provided to the teachers and the students.”

What’s the COVID-19 situation in schools?
The GHS had earlier confirmed three cases of COVID-19 in schools since their resumption two weeks ago.

Dr. Kumah Aboagye, the GHS Director-General, revealed this at a Ministry of Information press briefing on Monday, January 25, 2021.

He disclosed that two of the cases were recorded in two schools in the Upper West Region and one school in the Western Region.

Nationwide outlook
The recent surge in infections has seen 616 new cases move Ghana up to 3,813 active cases from 1,330 cases on January 8.

The GHS has recorded 377 deaths from the virus out of 62,751 confirmed cases whilst 58,561 persons have recovered or have been discharged after infections.

Currently, all 16 regions in the country have registered Coronavirus cases with the Greater Accra, Ashanti, Western, Eastern, and Central regions leading with the highest rate of infections.