Centre opines on the reopening of schools…get the details…
Wednesday, 23rd June 2021
Last year most schools were shut down in the month of March because of the pandemic and the government has decided that the schools will remain shut until a major section of the country’s population receives their vaccines against the deadly coronavirus, stated the government on this Tuesday afternoon.
"Schools require teachers and children to sit together. It gives the virus an opportunity to spread. We can only have this (re-opening of schools) when a large part of the population is protected," stated Dr VK Paul; Member of (Health), NITI Aayog.
"Until it (the spread of the virus) is predictable it is hard to re-open," he stated.
Dr Paul furthermore cautioned against the re-opening of schools due to the dropping trend in the number of daily fresh covid cases, saying: "The lull right now is because of restrictions. When they are removed cases may spike."
The educational institutions’ re-opening will "always be under active consideration... but the overall guidance is to be cautious", he further said.
Some states such as Telangana have decided that they will be re-opening the schools as well as colleges. Other states such as Kerala and Delhi, have decided that they will probably be continuing with the virtual classes pattern as of now.
When asked a somewhat similar question the previous week, Dr Paul said: "A lot of things need to be considered - vaccination of teachers and maintaining social distance, for example..."
"We should also remember that in many countries schools reopened then outbreaks were reported and they had to shut them down again. We don't want to put our children and teachers in that situation unless we have more confidence that the pandemic won't harm us," he stated next.
He suggested more data - particularly on how the virus might infect children - was needed.
As per the info from the government the coming month’s Sero Survey is likely to include as many as 14, 000 kids beyond 6 years of age.
Last month the authorities were seriously agitated and alarmed when about 8, 000 children as well as teenagers tested Covid positive in the Ahmednagar city of Maharashtra thereby accounting for nearly 10% of the caseload in that particular district.
Children under the age of 18 years haven’t yet received the permit to get vaccinated against covid although the pharmaceutical firm Bharat Biotech has started their vaccination trials for the age group of 2 to 18 years with Covaxin.
In the midst of its concern regarding how the deadly coronavirus might impact the children, the government, furthermore, has cancelled the ICSE and CBSE Exams for class X and class XII. A proposed alternative marking pattern has been amended after getting suggestions from the parents as well as students and has been approved by the highest court of the country, the Supreme Court.
The second wave of the Covid pandemic had hit the country pretty hard, with several lakhs of people infected by the virus and many thousands killed each day.
At the second wave’s peak more than four lakhs of new covid cases were recorded in a span of just 24-hours, and the analysis of and the research on the mortality related stats from certain states informed about Covid-centric fatalities during this time period were undercounted grossly.
Fresh cases of covid on a daily basis have dropped ever since, this morning the figures spanning across 24 hrs fell below 50, 000 cases for the first time in the span of the last 3 months and the various states are currently relaxing the various curbs imposed across the past couple of weeks.
The News Talkie Bureau
Source:
NDTV