 The opening of the second term of this full year to face-to-face instruction is critical not only for the education sector, but the nation as a whole. So says Chief Education Officer Dr. Fiona Philip-Mayer. On Monday, January 11, 2021, students will return to the classrooms guided though by strict COVID-19 protocols. Dr. Meyer says having schools closed for the better part of last year has had a detrimental impact on students, teachers and parents. The ministries of education and health she informed during an update to the nation have devised several COVID-related scenarios and responses for the reopening of schools. The possibility of an individual or student getting ill at school, a member of a family that is in close contact in quarantine, you know a possible teacher or staff member who tests positive for quarantine, quite a few scenarios and looked at them in depth, giving the medical, the scientific, but also the human element of how to deal with those situations on a school level. Chief Environmental Health Officer Parker Ragnanan says given the experience gathered last year in managing COVID-19, the Ministry of Health is confident that school can resume in the physical setting and any major catastrophe can be averted. The classroom comprehensive school experience was just one such experience and you would remember the domino kind of effect that this one experience had on the island. The question is really if there is a situation at one individual school, should every school on the island remain closed as a result? That is the question. And therefore in all other business sectors, so we've had persons at different business places who have contracted the disease, but have we seen all businesses shut down on the island? So we need to look at it very, very carefully and take very strategic approaches in terms of how we do things. The other thing is that we are asking as much as possible for us not to stigmatize and to discriminate. And that is very important. Sometimes we've heard about persons talking about a contact of a contact of a contact. So you're not evenly with that person, but because you're a family member, you are singled out as being a potential contact. At the Ministry of Health, we have fine-tuned our contact tracing capability. And like I've said, we have improved significantly on our state of preparedness. And therefore we are in a position now to work with our community nursing, to work with our epidemiology unit in terms of contact tracing and have very clear procedures and guidelines to do contact tracing in a school and who is at risk at a school if it's one classroom, if it's an entire block, if it's a whole form, if it's the entire school, and therefore the procedures would kick in once they have to. Mr. Ragnan says a strategic approach will be taken if there were to be COVID-related cases at any school. We need to look at the schooling question, the population of that school, the at risk groups, the numbers that we have. So again, there may be situations where if you have one case in a school, depending as to how many is exposed to that case, you may have to call close back that school. You may have 10 cases in a school, but depending on how it's managed, you may not have to close the entire school. So it depends on the dynamics, there are different dynamics that would determine the way forward. And so we're looking at different modalities and different plans as to how do we best manage a situation of nature. So we don't just pick 10 or 15 just like this. Chief Environmental Health Officer Parker Ragnan.