Government is listening to unions over scientists – experts say school closures against evidence
Two of the country’s top scientists who serve on the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) have expressed their disappointment at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement that public schools will close for four weeks during the Covid-19 storm, saying the decision goes against scientific advice and evidence.
This follows Ramaphosa’s address to the nation on Thursday night in which he announced public schools would shut down for four weeks, while Grade 12 pupils would take a one-week break.
Professor of vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Shabir Madhi, told News24 that the government had not taken the advice of scientists who, he said, agreed that schools should not be closed.
“I think it’s a case of the government deciding to take advice from the unions, rather than from the scientists because the scientific community has been pretty uniform that there is very little reason to close the schools.
“The opening of the schools has got very little to do with the transmission of the virus and if anything, the closure of the schools is going to do more harm than good,” Madhi said.
The science
He explained that children were not responsible for Covid-19 transmissions, while teachers were probably not getting infected while at schools.