Accra Girls students demonstrate, parents storm school after COVID-19 infections

Students of Accra Girls Senior High school are protesting to put pressure on the management of the school to allow them to go home following reports that six of their colleagues have contracted COVID-19.

Students have massed up on the schools’ premises in wait for their parents to come and take them home.

The infected students were isolated in the school’s sickbay on Monday, June 29, 2020, together with some other students who also showed symptoms of COVID-19.

Health officials from the Ayawaso East Health directorate on Saturday, July 4, moved the students who tested positive to the Ga East Municipal Hospital for treatment.

This development has led to the students demonstrating amidst fears that the virus is spreading among them.

The students, who gathered outside their classrooms, kept chanting: “We’ll go home.”

Anxious parents have also trooped to the school to try and take their wards home.

Police officers have been deployed to the school to prevent the agitated parents from entering the school premises.

Speaking to journalists, a parent said: “I heard the news last night, so, I rushed here to find out what was happening… I’m anxious and scared and, so, we need the school authorities to tell us something.”

Media reports indicate that some parents of students in the School had begun withdrawing their children from the school since Sunday, June 05, 2020.

According to some of the parents, none of the students were tested when schools resumed and this, for them, is the genesis of the problem.

 

Although schools were closed down across the country after the outbreak of the deadly virus, final-year Junior and Senior High School students were directed to return to school in June 2020 to prepare for their final examinations.

Final-year university students were also directed to return to school on Monday, 15 June 2020.

Meanwhile, Ghana’s COVID-19 case count has crossed the 20,000-mark after the confirmation of 697 new cases, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has reported.

 

Ghana’s total case count is now 20,085 as of Sunday, 5 July 2020.

The results are from samples that were taken between 16 June and 1 July 2020, according to the GHS.

Also, five more persons have died from the disease taking the total death toll to 122.

The total number of active cases is now 5,093.

The number of patients who have recovered or discharged also stands at 14,870.

While the condition of 22 patients is severe, that of eight others is critical.

The Greater Accra still tops the list with 10,979 cases, out of which 2,501 are active while the Ashanti Region has a total of 4,244 cases.