13 Aug 2020

 Mahalapye’s Tshikinyega Primary School has been temporarily closed following a confirmed COVID-19 positive case of a teacher at the school.

The Mahalapaye District Health Management Team (DHMT) coordinator, Ms Thandie Kgosiesele said in an interview  yesterday that the teacher was one of the two COVID-19 positive cases registered in Mahalapye recently.

So far, 120 people, including pupils and teachers, had been quarantined, she said adding that the contact tracing process was ongoing.

Ms Kgosiesele said the school was temporarily closed on Tuesday after a brief meeting with staff and parents.

“The two cases are a male and a female who have a history of travelling to Gaborone on July 24, 2020 to visit the teacher’s sister. They returned to Mahalapye on July 25, but on July 29, the teacher developed flu-like symptoms and went to Mowana Clinic where she was given a sick leave and later resumed for duty on August 2.

On August 5, the teacher’s sister contacted and informed the teacher that her child who schools at Masa Primary School had tested positive for coronavirus. That is when the teacher informed us and we swabbed the two of them, the same day, as they were primary contacts. When their results came out on August 11 they were both positive,” she added.

Ms Kgosiesele said the two had since been put under isolation at Mahalapye Hospice, which was recently refurbished to become one of the isolation centres in the district. 

This isolation centre, she said, had 12 self-contained rooms.

Given the current surge in confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country, Ms Kgosiesele urged members of the public to remain calm and continue adhering to COVID-19 protocols. BOPA