Full face-to-face after midterms

WITH CORONAVIRUS cases plunging amid the retreat of Omicron infections, Prime Minister Andrew Holness disclosed that full resumption of face-to-face schooling would take effect after the midterm holidays.

Holness made the declaration on Thursday during the sitting of the House of Representatives during the ceremonial opening of Parliament.

He also signalled that the days of the Disaster Risk Management Act, concerning COVID-19 protocols, were numbered.

The prime minister emphasised that the low health risk to children and observations of staggering levels of learning loss tipped the scale for deciding on full engagement in schools.

“I shudder to think of the education loss and what it will have, the impact it will have, five, six, 10 years down the road ... ,” Holness told lawmakers.

Among the amended COVID containment measures were adjustments to the curfew and gatherings among people of faith.

Effective Thursday, February 11 to Thursday, February 24, the curfew will be from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., instead of 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

The gathering limit of 100 people for churches will be removed and instead will be based on the capacity of the building given social-distance guidelines.

The prime minister, who had hinted in the past of imposing a vaccinate-or-test policy on public-sector workers, struck a more reticent posture in his address in Parliament on Thursday. He emphasised that Jamaica’s democratic philosophy would not facilitate compulsory vaccination.

“The Government has been unfairly cast in many ways as saying that we are promoting a compulsory vaccination policy. I recall distinctly when the question of vaccination was first raised, ‘What is the position of the Government?’ and we were quite clear that there would be no mandatory compulsory vaccination. That would just not be possible in our system of governance,” he said.