Limiting the spread of COVID-19 amongst Ghanaian students

Recommendations

Overarching strategies

• Issue national and subnational health guidelines to ensure students and staff safety.
• Prepare critical financing plans to cover the additional costs that schools will face to ensure preparedness.
• Assess school WASH infrastructure readiness and availability of hygiene resources in schools.
• Establish an effective communication and coordination mechanism to build trust and consensus.
• Ensure continuity of learning, especially for vulnerable populations.
• Build system resilience.
• Develop robust health monitoring systems to ensure the timely identification of resurgence of community transmission.

Additional considerations

• The decision to reopen schools should depend on the compliance of robust infrastructure and health and sanitation protocols that could contain the spread of COVID-19. Unless these measures are effectively implemented, we would advise a lot of caution in the decision to proceed with school reopening.
• Authorities should allow for experimentation of different strategies to develop a more nuanced understanding of the most effective and feasible measures.