This study determined the level of school preparedness for emergency management in Osun State, Nigeria. It also examined the dimension of school preparedness for emergency management based on school ownership and identified the challenges militating against the effective emergency management in the state. The study sample consisted of 30 head-teachers and 150 teachers of primary schools in the state. With the use of a questionnaire on emergency preparedness for data collection, it was found that there was there was a slightly better level (51.1%) of emergency preparedness in public primary schools compared to private (48.9%). However, common challenges militating against effective emergency management were “inadequate facilities (RSI = 0.732),” “limited financial resources (RSI = 0.729),” and “lack of emergency management plan (RSI = 0.707).” The study concluded that efforts of school ownerships for the management of emergency such as COVID-19 are still lingering. Proactive policy frameworks and full implementation of emergency management are recommended for education policymakers.
TopIntroduction
There are different ways through which viruses spread. These among others include through disease-bearing organisms known as vectors. For example, insects that feed on such plants often transmit viruses from plant to plant. Also in animals, blood-sucking insects (e.g. malaria fever that is transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes) can carry viruses in animals. Influenza viruses transmit sneezing and coughing in humans and other animals. Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, a virus generally known as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was discovered with the first few cases found in Western Europe and North America (Sharp & Hahn, 2011). Another virus that has just been discovered towards the end of the year 2019 was Coronavirus Disease.
To set the record straight, it has been documented before 2019 that there was an outbreak of a coronavirus in 2003 (Zhou et al., 2020). This outbreak was responsible for the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China. In 2003, the report showed that 8098 individuals were infected with a mortality rate of 9%, across 29 countries of the world (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). However, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first discovered in 2019 from Wuhan, a fast developing business city in China (Zhu, et al., 2020). On January 30, 2020, the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern.” Because of increasing and wide spreading rate of the disease to the rest of the world, and following the 1968 Hong Kong flu (H3N2) and 2009 Pandemic flu (H1N1) which led to the death of more than one million and 300,000 persons respectively (Simonsen, Clarke, Schonberger, Arden, Cox, & Fukuda, 1998; Viboud, Simonsen, Fuentes, Flores, Miller, & Chowell, 2016). Three months after its discovery, precisely on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2020) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The attributes of coronavirus outbreak of 2003 and 2019 are similar. The virus and the disease were inscribed by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Virus (ICTV) (Cui, Li, & Shi, 2019; Lai, Shih, Ko, Tang, & Hsueh, 2020; WHO, 2020).
The COVID-19 shares some characteristics with other related viruses. These characteristics are the signs and symptoms expected to be exhibited by an infected person. Following the clinical diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 by researchers, the most common signs and symptoms are fever, dry cough, tiredness (Chen et al., 2020; Huang, et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). The less common symptoms include aches and pains, sore throat, conjunctivitis, headache, loss of taste or smell, a rash on skin. When it is severe, an infected person may exhibit symptoms such as difficulty in breathing or shortness of breath, chest pain or pressure, and loss of speech or movement (Chen et al., 2020; Huang, et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020).