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“A parent should not take a sick child to school. He should call SNS 24. SNS 24 does an exam, say yes [a criança] Covid is suspected or not. Parents notify the school. The school notifies the health authorities in the area. The child is tested and evaluated at school ”. This is the circuit that a child or young person with symptoms of covid-19 must pass through, explained this Friday, the general director of Health, Graça Freitas, at a press conference.
Unraveling a little more the contents of the manual in preparation on how to act in case of suspected contagion in the school environment, Graça Freitas, assumed that the strategy involves communicating various entities from civil protection, to town councils, to services of health. school and health to detect early what may be the beginning of an outbreak of the new coronavirus.
Although the articulation between the different services is fundamental, the most important role concerns the parents, to whom the Director General of Health calls for children not to go to school, if they present any symptoms of covid (fever, cough, breathing difficulties). Instead, the advice is to call SNS 24 (808 24 24 24), where the need for a screening test will be evaluated.
Parents should also make another call to the school, which will trigger “a quick survey to see if any student needs to be isolated.”, Continues the head of DGS.
Through the results of the work carried out between the school and the local health authority, other measures can still be taken, but the objective is to avoid the closure of schools at all costs, repeated Graça Freitas, in line with what was also has reported. by the Minister of Health, Marta Temido, and by the Prime Minister himself, António Costa.
Teaching doesn’t stop, even with schools closed
Asked about the French decision to close 22 schools, this Friday, just a few days after the start of the school year, the director general of Health said that the rules are different from one country to another. In Portugal, the idea is that “there is a very fast performance and a very large communication flow between the school, the educators and the health authorities to allow finding who are the close contacts to a case”.
The objective “is to close as little as possible and it is to close from the physical point of view. There is a physical closure of a room, a class or the school, in extreme situations, but it does not imply a mandatory interruption of the school year.“, he clarified.
The resumption of face-to-face classes is scheduled for September 14 and 17, and all schools must have a plan to apply in case of suspected coronavirus infection. General guidelines on back to school were published two months ago, however DGS is expected to release a manual with details on the circumstance of suspected infection in the coming days.
The closure of schools was one of the first measures to contain the covid-19 that were carried out in the country. Since March 12 – when there were only 78 cases of contagion with the new coronavirus in Portugal – face-to-face teaching has been suspended in all schools. At that time, this orientation was already in force in the municipalities of Lousada and Felgueiras, where the first transmission chains of the disease appeared.
The next school year (which will have more school days and fewer holidays at Easter) is as face-to-face as possible, even so the Ministry of Education has prepared three different scenarios for the 2020-21 school year: a regime of face-to-face classes, another not face-to-face and mixed.
