The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, says 10 million facemasks have been distributed to schools, with each student entitled to two reusable masks per semester.
In addition, the GES also distributed 9.9 million hand sanitizers, 1.65 million packs of tissue papers, 38,000 thermometer guns, and 300,000 face shields and some Veronica buckets.
This he added would replenish the personal protective equipment (PPE) next month to avoid any shortage.
Professor Opoku-Amankwa at a media engagement in Accra, said a monitoring team comprising personnel from the Ghana Health Service and the GES would, next week, embark on monitoring exercises in schools across the country to evaluate the level of compliance with the COVID-19 safety protocols.
It would also analyse progress made in managing class-sizes and report the situation accordingly.
Prof. Opoku-Amankwa reiterated the need for heads of schools and managers to comply with the instructional hours issued by the Service.
The instructional hours are four hours for Kindergarten pupils, six hours for primary and junior high students, and seven to eight hours for senior high students.
The GES -DG urged school heads and managers to enforce the COVID-19 preventive and safety protocols in their schools to avert any spread of the virus.
So far, four students had contracted the virus since schools reopened on January 15, this year.
Three were from a secondary school in the Upper West Region and one student in Daboase in the Western Region.
A total of 34 contacts of the infected students had been traced and only one person also tested positive for COVID-19.
Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said 9.2 million students and 500,000 educational workers were affected when schools closed in March last year.
