While caution is, of course, necessary to avoid another potential outbreak, evidence suggests that the current rise in infection rate does not warrant reverting to the shutdown approach. Adding new shutdowns on top of the already one-and-a-half year gap in classes will be nothing short of disastrous for the country in the long run.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has already warned South Asian countries that the repercussions from the interruption to education, that has already occurred, could last decades.
This alarming projection alone should be enough to completely abandon any potential plans for school closures unless the situation was at its most dire. It makes even less sense if the whole country remains open but not schools.
There are, however, more compelling reasons.
The most important and obvious one being the impact of Covid-19 on the under-18 population, which has been relatively insignificant worldwide in terms of serious illness and mortality. In the US, for instance, only 678 under-18 deaths were recorded amid over 800,000 total deaths.
In Bangladesh, the figures are similar with over 93% of confirmed cases being recorded in people over the age of 20, according to government data in 2021. It could not be clearer that Covid-19 does not pose any significant risk to children’s wellbeing that it would warrant school closures.
The potential risks of school closures far outweigh the risks posed by the current rise in Covid-19 cases, there is no mistaking that.