While starting next Monday in the City of Buenos Aires, the use of masks will no longer be mandatory in schools at both the initial, primary and secondary levels, in the province the picture is different and this element will continue to be a necessary requirement to be able to enter the classroom.
This was clarified by the Director General of Culture and Education in Buenos Aires, Alberto Sileoni, who explained that the district governed by Axel Kicillof will maintain the protocols recommended by the national authorities and that also apply “in the rest of the country”.
“I'm not going to mess with the decisions of other jurisdictions. We follow the guidelines established by the Federal Health Council, COFESA, and our own Ministry of Health, which is the one who orders health issues in the province,” explained the official.
Sileoni said that “for now there is nothing new” with regard to the use of the mask in schools, so it will continue to be compulsory “from the first grade to the last year of high school.”
The member of the provincial cabinet justified his position by noting that “winter is coming and there are some international signs” that would support the measure of maintaining this element of protection during classes.
“We work with the people of Minister Nicolás Kreplak, they are the ones who are most versed in setting the way, we are dedicated to education. Of course there are some decisions that we make together,” he explained in dialogue with Radio Rebelde,.
In this way, the official ruled out that in the short term the Province will follow the path of the City, which from next Monday will no longer require masks in classrooms, a measure that will apply to the three levels: initial, primary and secondary.
Until today, only kindergarten children and students up to the third grade were exempt from wearing the mask in class. The measure to be announced at a press conference by the head of government of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, extends flexibility to all grades of primary school and adds to secondary school.
However, the position of the Buenos Aires authorities could change in the coming months, as Kreplak himself, said that if there is no new peak of cases of COVID-19 in the following weeks, in May it will propose nationwide that the removal of masks in classrooms be authorized for all schools.
In dialogue with Urbana Play, the minister stressed that since the beginning of the classes “there was no impact of the coronavirus” in terms of a sharp increase in infections, but he stressed that “ventilation, chinstrap” and distancing measures still apply.
“We must observe what happens at the worst moment of the epidemic that is to come, as it does every year. In other years also the worst moment of contagion in respiratory diseases is what is to come (with the arrival of cold days)”, he said.
In this regard, he acknowledged that “if the month of April remains the same and the cold begins”, perhaps he could “propose and discuss it nationally to see if the mask is removed” from the classrooms.
“We have to watch a few more weeks to see what happens. If we see that in a few cold weeks the pandemic does not increase there again, of course, that it will be possible to take it out of the classroom,” he said.
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