Final year students and gold track Form Two students of senior high schools in the Tema Metropolis on Monday resume school after several weeks of staying at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The schools, in accordance with a presidential directive had put in measures including handwashing sets, reducing the number of students in a classroom and having educational materials on the Coronavirus displayed on campuses.

Mr Felix Mensah Nii Anang-La, Tema Metropolitan Chief Executive, Dr Sally Quartey, Tema Metropolitan Director of Health, Mrs Bernice Ofori, Tema Metro Education Director and Mr Joseph Korto, Presiding Member, Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) , visited the schools on the first day of reopening to welcome and educate teachers and students.

At the Chemu SHS, there were five handwashing sets at the main entrance were teachers and students washed their hands before entering the campus. There was however no thermometer gun and handwashing sets near the classrooms at the time of the visit.

In order to obey the social distancing protocol, 38 classrooms had been set up with 25 mono desks each for students while students and teachers were all in masks.

Rice and stew was served to ensure that students would not go out to purchase food as food vendors were not allowed to sell on the compound.

The situation was not too different at the Our Lady of Mercy (OLAM) SHS where students were seen seated in their classrooms observing social distancing and wearing masks. A total of 19 classrooms had been designated for the 420 final students as the school had no Form Two gold track students.

OLAMS, in addition to having veronica buckets at the main entrance of the school, also had some placed on the corridors of the classrooms.

The two schools had sickbays to handle minor cases while Chemu and OLAMS had designated its assembly hall and one classroom respectively as isolation centres.

Mr Anang-La commended the teachers for their dedication to duty and urged them to strictly enforce the protocols among the students to curb an outbreak of the virus on campus.

He advised the students not to only observe the protocols on campus but must continuously adhere to the measures wherever they found themselves as failure to do so could increase spread of the virus.

He said his outfit was distributing more veronica buckets, soaps, and tissues to the schools to ensure that there were enough on all the corridors for students and teachers to wash their hands after touching doorknobs and other surfaces.

Meanwhile, the Tema zone had received their set of personal protective equipment to be distributed to teachers and students in Tema and its immediate environs.

The items included 10 thermometer guns, 1,871 reusable nose masks and 6,024 70 per cent alcohol based sanitizers for schools in the Kpone Katamanso Municipality with Tema West receiving 10 thermometer guns, 1,256 sanitizers and 3,739 nose masks.

Tema Metropolis received 74 thermometer guns, 6,987 sanitizers and 10,746 masks while 16 thermometer guns, 4,056 nose masks and 1,352 sanitizers went to the Ashaiman Municipality.