Covid-19 Has Taken 46 Teachers in Nicaragua

confirms a teachers’ organization

The teacher’s organization continues to ask the Government to suspend face-to-face classes to reduce the risk of deaths due to the pandemic

By EFE / Confidencial

HAVANA TIMES – To date, 46 teachers have died with symptoms related to covid-19 in Nicaragua, the last two this week, said Lesbia Rodriguez, coordinator of the Unidad Sindical Magisterial teachers’ association, on Saturday.

The two new victims are a teacher who died Wednesday and another on Friday, (August 19 and 21) both in Matagalpa, she said.

The union leader said that, despite the increasing number of deceased teachers, “the government continues to expose our educators to contagion and then to death.”

They ask to suspend classes

Likewise, Rodriguez said that, as a union, they do not understand “how parents, knowing this alarming news, continue to send their children to schools, and most of them without due protection.”

The teachers have previously asked the authorities to suspend face-to-face classes to reduce the risk of deaths due to the pandemic, without success.

The Government registers 133 deaths from covid-19 and 4,311 positive cases, according to data from the Ministry of Health.

The independent Citizens’ Covid-19 Observatory reports 2,652 deaths from coronavirus suspects, as well as 9,822 suspected cases.

Government insists on face-to-face classes

The Ortega regime celebrates as an achievement its maintaining face-to-face classes during these months of pandemic; However, this alleged “success” has meant the death of 46 teachers and the contagion of many teachers and their families.

“Thank God in Nicaragua we continue working. We are not closing (…) we have not wasted time,” said the vice president and government spokesperson, Rosario Murillo, in early August. She referred to statements by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who expressed the need to reopen schools in countries where community transmission was controlled.

The Government has been criticized from various sectors of society for promoting massive events and agglomerations. Doing so runs smack against the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). The regime has also taken heat for not suspending face-to-face classes in the midst of the pandemic, and for barely establishing restrictions.

Ortega declared himself against the citizens “Stay at home” campaign saying it would destroy the local economy, which has contracted for the last two years and is mostly informal (an estimated 70%).

[Nicaragua is currently under a police state where all public protest is prohibited and repressed by Police and government paramilitary forces.]