Are school exams one of the reasons for COVID-19 spike?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

ON MAY 16 of this year, my letter to The Gleaner regarding concerns about conducting Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) exams in the middle of a pandemic was published.

At the time I wrote: “If just a handful of our children should contract this virus as a result of sitting these exams, the impact on their various communities across the country will be many multiples of the Alorica incident.”

Since the first week of August, Jamaica has seen an upward tick in the number of persons contracting COVID-19. Many schools had opened their doors shortly before the July 27 commencement of CXC exams, in order to accommodate school-based assessments and subject revisions.

Two weeks after that initial opening, the country began to see an increase in COVID-19 cases, and then another two weeks after the actual exams began, the numbers have exploded. The majority of the cases are ‘under investigation’, which simply means that there is still no clarity on the outcomes of those investigations.

Children tend to be largely asymptomatic, but they can also be potent and yet unwitting transmitters.

No real sustained asymptomatic testing seems to have been done in Jamaica, so it is inconclusive as to whether the holding of exams could have been a contributing factor for the spread of COVID-19.

However, before we rush to open the schools and put our students back in October, I implore the Government to actively investigate whether there is a link between the time when the CXC exams were held and this rather dramatic increase in COVID-19.

HENRY DURBAN