Schools should be the last to close even with the existence of Omicron- UNICEF

By News room

19^th Dec 2021

Despite the rise of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, “nationwide school closures should be avoided whenever possible, the Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Henrietta Fore has said.

The new cases are being fuelled, increasingly, by Omicron; the new variant of concern that public health experts and scientists are working hard to understand and assess. Amid rising uncertainty, many governments are weighing whether to keep schools open.

But Henrietta said that one thing was certain: “Another wave of widespread school closures would be disastrous for children.” The caution comes barely a month to the much anticipated reopening of schools in Uganda, where learners have been kept home for close to two years.

These closures have wiped out decades of progress in education and rendered childhood unrecognizable. A shadow pandemic of child labour, child marriage and mental health issues has taken hold”.  Fore said and added that when COVID-19 community transmission increases and stringent public health measures become a necessity, schools must be the last place to close and the first to re-open.

According to the UN agency, this generation of schoolchildren who have been affected by closure of schools due to Covid-19 could collectively lose USD 17 trillion in potential lifetime earnings. He emphasised that 2022 cannot be yet another year of disrupted learning.