The Education Minister of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Carlone Désir, is not in favour of requiring fourth-, fifth- and sixth-year primary school students to wear facemasks, La Libre Belgique and Sudinfo newspapers reported on Saturday according to Belga News Agency.
Such a requirement is seen as necessary by Federal Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke, who has said that he would like to see a mask mandate issued for upper primary-school classes as a way of containing the current fourth wave of the coronavirus.
For Minister Désir, a facemask mandate for primary students looks like a societal choice and not a decision based on scientific arguments.
"When there is so little proof of the epidemiological value-added of a measure that has major drawbacks in terms of comfort and learning, the children’s wellbeing needs to be given precedence,” she is quoted as saying in the Sudinfo newspapers.
"Masks were not imposed in primary schools before mass vaccination, while the society was under lockdown,” Minister Désir argued. “There could thus be no question of taking stronger measures for the children in a society where adults can be vaccinated, and which is largely unconfined.”
