Given the huge spike in community infection recently, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) fully agrees with SADTU’s view that schools should be closed as this is likely create more problems for the country’s healthcare system.

Closing schools would in actual fact be following the advice of the World Health Organization (WHO) that reopening of schools should be in the context of low community transmission, which is the complete opposite of the situation in South Africa.

DENOSA is extremely concerned that reopening schools at this stage would be adding many more fronts from which healthcare workers must fight the COVID-19 war. 

Already, there are cases of elders in the Western Cape who have been infected because their grand-children contracted the virus from school. 

The decision to reopen schools, at the time when healthcare facilities are feeling the strain already and at the time when the country is experiencing the rise in infections, will just bring more problems to the already overworked healthcare workers. It is a decision that is also likely to breed more corpses because many school-going children are cared for by their grandparents because their parents work far away from home. 

Issued by the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA)
For more information, contact:
Cassim Lekhoathi, DENOSA Acting General Secretary
Cell: 082 328 9671
Simon Hlungwani, DENOSA President
Cell: 082 328 9635