The Cs spokesperson in the Canarian Parliament warns of the high degree of incidence of COVID-19 in the capital of Gran Canaria, with almost 60% of positive cases
Canary Islands, Friday, September 11, 2020. The spokesperson for Cs in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, Vidina Espino, stated this Friday that “it is not prudent to start face-to-face classes in certain neighborhoods of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria”, taking into account the great impact of the coronavirus pandemic in some areas of the capital of Gran Canaria.
For this reason, she has asked the Minister of Education, Universities, Culture and Sports of the Canary Islands Government, Manuela de Armas, to “explain what has changed in the epidemiological situation of the city, or of the islands of Lanzarote and El Hierro, so that she has modified her criteria”, since in recent days she had been in favor of the classes being online in the three cases mentioned due to the number of infections.
Vidina Espino has warned of the “high degree of incidence of COVID-19 in the capital of Gran Canaria, which concentrates 60% of the positive cases in the Archipelago” and has stated that “the continuous changes in criteria and contradictions of the Ministry of Education”, before the start of the school year, “only generate more insecurity in the educational community, which already sees the return to school with great concern and uncertainty.”
For example, he has referred to the carrying out of PCR, which, instead of “being carried out in a general way and before starting classes, as they have done in other communities”, will be carried out only in the health areas with the highest number of infections and once teachers, students and members of the PAS have joined the educational centers.
The spokesperson for the orange formation has been in favor of "starting classes as soon as possible, but in a safe way", something that, as the management teams of the educational centers themselves have stated, "is not guaranteed today, as they are finding many difficulties in obtaining the necessary protective material." In this sense, Vidina Espino has criticized that "the 1,500 euros that Education has allocated to each center, to acquire this material, is totally insufficient for many of them."
Likewise, it has reiterated its request that, following the recommendations of the experts, "the student-teacher ratio be reduced to a maximum number of 20 per class", and, especially, in the case of those centers in which classes are taught in barracks, since "there is hardly any possibility for students to keep the required distance and ventilate as required."
Vidina Espino has once again questioned whether “the 2,500 teachers that the Ministry of Education has announced that it is going to hire are sufficient and that they can be properly incorporated into their work on the 15th,” since to the problems that have arisen for their appointment we must add that they will barely have time to adapt to the work they are going to do.
