After two months of complete lockdown against COVID-19, India is planning to reopen schools and colleges for conducting pending exams and evaluation under actionable guidance for safe operations through the prevention, early detection and control of COVID-19 in schools and other educational facilities.
Safety of students, teachers and staff is of utmost importance. Therefore it becomes imperative that reopening schools should be guided by a risk-based approach to maximize the educational and health benefit for students, teachers, staff, and the wider community, and help prevent a new outbreak of COVID-19 in the community.
Data from individual countries and a recent review by WHO of COVID-19 in children suggest that children are less often reported as cases than adults, and that the infection generally causes mild disease. Serious illness due to COVID-19 is seen infrequently in children, although there have been rare cases of critical illness.
To date, there have been few educational institutions involved in COVID-19 outbreaks, but from these studies, it appears that disease transmission was primarily related to social events linked to school or university life rather than transmission within classrooms. These studies also suggest that the introduction of the virus was likely by an adult member of staff.
Precautions are necessary to prevent the potential spread of COVID-19 in school settings. Beside maintaining hygiene and daily practices at school, daily screening for body temperature on entry into the building for all staff, students and visitors to identify persons with elevated body temperatures which may indicate the presence of a fever, a most common symptom noted in Covid-19 infection can help reduce or dramatically slow the spread of viruses and infections.
Using our thermal cameras and IR Fever Screening Systems specially designed for rapid fever screening at entrances of the school to passively measure body temperatures, school authorities can be more discrete, efficient, and effective in identifying and isolating individuals who are sick and may need further screening with virus-specific tests.
Across the globe variety of institutions, including hospitals, transportation agencies, businesses, factories, and front liners are already using our fever screening systems as an effective prevention and control protocol to help resume work safely and efficiently and as part of employee health and screening in-line with Government advisory.
We believe that an inclusive and early collaboration between schools and our thermal screening solutions will help implement necessary measures for maintaining safe school operations while they educate next generation of caregivers, scientists, engineers and doctors to become advocates for building a safer and more caring community.
DS
CEO