The mayor for Torrevieja – Eduardo Dolon – has ruled out teachers being tested for the coronavirus ahead of schools reopening in the region.
He was ordered by the Spanish health ministry to step down testing just seven hours before city-wide testing was due to occur.
Teachers had been told to group at the Torrevieja leisure centre, which the local government had hired out, at 3pm today (September 2nd) but the Spain government ordered them to stand down this morning at 8am.
The Valencia health ministry issued the stand down saying that the testing which was due to be delivered by private contractor Ribera Salud, does not fit official government guidelines in Spain.
This means that the city of Torrevieja could have been liable to be convicted for disobedience against the Spain government had the testing gone ahead.
The city’s mayor, Eduardo Dolon, enthused that the situation was ‘political’ and was something between the government and the private contractors who are contracted running health services in the city until October 2021.
Children are to return to school in the Valencia community in the coming weeks.
Spain will make masks mandatory for all students older than six, require students to wash their hands five times a day and have them try to maintain 1.5 meters (five feet) of interpersonal distance. All students between the ages of six and 16 must attend classes.
Temperatures will also be taken at the beginning of each day, either at home or schools that will be disinfected and regularly ventilated.
Once a COVID-19 case is detected at a school, students and teachers in their group or close contacts will have to isolate. An entire school will only shut down temporarily if there is “uncontrolled contagion” — a metric that has not been defined.
Parents, especially those with precarious jobs, are still unsure how they will be able to take off work to stay home with their confined children.
“I can’t conceive that parents would bring their sick children to school,” said Health Minister Salvador Illa.
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