At the Larch location of the Vincent van Gogh College in Assen, all pupils from the fourth grade are obliged to wear a mouth mask. This also applies to teachers and employees, according to a letter that parents and students received from the school.
“In order to limit the risk of spreading the virus as much as possible, we have decided to introduce a mouth masks rule for pupils from the upper grades and the staff in the school. This rule means that students from grade 4 in the building and therefore also wear a mouth mask in class. For the employees, they must wear a mouth mask in the corridors and in places where it is less easy for them to keep 1.5 meters away “, quotes RTV Drenthe from the letter.
The masking obligation will initially be introduced for the period up to 1 September. “This is in connection with the incubation period that the virus can have. If it then appears that the number of infections in Drenthe remains unabatedly low, we want to scrap the measure,” says the school.
‘We are stricter than the guidelines’
The director of the school, Koos Nieuwland, is aware that this is a drastic measure. “We are stricter than the guidelines that were announced at the beginning of June.”
But the school consciously opts for it because much is still unknown about the transmissibility of the virus by young people from the age of 15. “Maybe they are more contagious than we first thought,” says Nieuwland.
“In addition, many of us have been on vacation in recent weeks and we see that there have been corona outbreaks in a number of popular vacation spots. I don’t want to run the risk of getting a new seat of corona here.”
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