A private school in Groblersdal in Limpopo has decided that pupils in grades RRR, RR1, 1 and 3 should stay at home after they are done with their end-of-year assessments.
The New Horizon Private school took this decision on Monday in a bid to prevent the spread of measles and German measles (rubella) in nearby Dennilton and surrounding areas.
The school said grade R and 2 pupils should continue to come to school until further notice from their register class teachers, while grade 4 to 9 pupils would still follow their exam schedules until their last scheduled exam paper.
It said the decision that grade RRR, RR1, 1 and 3 should stay at home was aimed at preventing the viruses from spreading and to “avoid the possible health consequences to an infected child and the possible negative academic outcomes for children”.
Information received from local doctors indicated chickenpox cases were also on the rise, it said. Though children were vaccinated against these diseases, it was not unusual for children to still contract them.
“But what is unusual is the high number of reported cases. It seems to be much more intense than previous years,” the school said in a memo to parents on Monday.
November is the period when there are end of year assessments for preschoolers up to grade 3 pupils and exams for grades 3 to 9 pupils.
“During this period our school has had a large number of grade RRR up to grade 3 learners absent due to the outbreak.”
The school said two of their teachers had been infected and cases in the grade 4 and grade 5 groups had been reported since last week.
“Managing the assessments of the preschool and juniors are somewhat easier than the scheduled exam papers of the grade 4 up to 9 learners. It has so far been a difficult time handling the situation with so many learners and teachers absent due to illness and some teachers also writing exams.”
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said since the beginning of the year until October 12, 339 laboratory-confirmed cases of measles and 5,323 cases of rubella had been reported by the measles/rubella reference laboratory at its Centre for Vaccines and Immunology.
The majority of measles cases were in Gauteng (150). Limpopo reported five laboratory-confirmed measles cases and 67 rubella cases.
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