The authorities fight not the pandemic, but against children and education. This is the message of the public association “Părinți Solidari” (“Solidary Parents”). In a news conference at IPN, the association’s executive director Ala Revenco said the authorities have misinformed the population the past few weeks. In a move to inflate the infection rate among children, they present information in a manipulative way and taken out of context. “Most probably, these actions are taken in a move to keep the schools closed until the end of the school year,” stated Ala Revenco.

Since March 1, most of the students have studied online. “At the start of the pandemic, in March-May 2020, the education process was moved to the online, but in that period there was a state of emergency with maximum restrictions for the entire population. In March-April 2021, the harshest restrictions were applied only in relation to the education system and the authorities didn’t present relevant arguments,” stated Ala Revenco. According to her, the authorities avoid speaking about the risk of online education that has more weak points than strong points. Some of the children remain unsupervised. The students became involved in online learning to a small extent, the motivation of students who are online for a long period of time is reduced and the teaching staff is overburdened.

Ala Revenco noted that as a result of the decisions taken by the authorities, the children can go to the market, the store, any public eating place and to the gym, by crowded public transport, but they cannot go to school, which is a vital place for their intellectual, physical, social and emotional development. COVID-19 statistics show that when the number of new cases was of 400-700 a week, the authorities closed the schools, transferred the education process to the online and excessively and distortedly informed about the number of infections among children. Now that the number of cases was of 2,400-4,270 a week, real restrictive measures in the case of risk groups weren’t taken, information and awareness-raising campaigns weren’t conducted and the authorities didn’t show any kind of concern. “Why aren’t the authorities concerned about such a high number of cases of infection among persons older than 60? Since the start of the pandemic, we have had about 77,000 cases, 4,386 deaths and a death rate of 5.7%,” stated Ala Revenco. According to her, the decision not to allow the first-fourth graders to return to classrooms is ineffective. The kindergartens worked, but didn’t generate an upsurge in the number of cases of COVID-19. The primary school children also do not pose a considerable risk for influencing the number of new infections.

Psychologist-therapist Cezara Dilevschi said the number of applications to her office from mothers with children has trebled. The impact on the physical state of children, such as tiredness, is much greater at online classes. “I have dealt with many complaints about states of sadness, lack of motivation, sleep disorders, irascibility in small children due to the fact that they do not know how to express their feelings. In teens, the lack of socialization and physical activities makes them depressive,” stated Cezara Dilevschi. She noted that together with “Solidary Parents”, she analyzed the risks to which children are exposed in the case of long-term distance learning. 80% of the participants in the poll noted different changes of the emotional state in children during online learning. 59% said the child lost motivation to study. 69% consider the child is negatively influenced by remote learning, while 44% that the previous health problems worsened in the period.

Victoria Rusnac, the mother of four children three of whom are of school age, said she does not have a babysitter or grandparents who could help her and she is in a difficult situation. She takes the youngest two children to her workplace each day. “In the first grade, the children studied only for two hours a day during four weekdays. As a result, half of the class reads badly. I’m concerned about the fact that I can go with my children anywhere, to the mall, restaurant, church, but we cannot go to school. I cannot understand why the authorities consider the school is a hotbed of COVID-19. Online learning in primary classes is rather mimicked,” she stated.

The public association “Solidary Parents” suggests returning to classrooms and testing teachers and concentrating the efforts to diminish the number of infections with COVID-19 on the 60+ age categories.