Shanghai yesterday said it would reopen all schools including kindergartens, primary schools and middle schools on Sept. 1 after months of COVID-19 closures.
All teachers and students are to be required to take nucleic acid tests for COVID-19 every day before leaving campus, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission said in a statement.
It also called for teachers and students to carry out a 14-day “self health management” within the city ahead of the school reopening, it said.
Photo: AFP
Shanghai shut all schools in March before the city’s two-month lockdown to combat its worst COVID-19 outbreak through April and May.
It allowed some students of high school and middle school to return to classrooms in June, while most of the rest continued to study at home for the remainder of the semester.
The announcement brings relief to many residents, but fears about COVID-19 lockdowns continue to persist, as China vows to stick to its “dynamic zero” policy, which requires all positive cases and their close contacts to undergo quarantine.
On Saturday, videos circulating on Chinese social media showed customers pushing past security guards and running out of an IKEA mall in central Shanghai in panic as an announcement blared over its sound system saying the mall was being locked down due to COVID-19 contact tracing.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the videos, but IKEA customer service said yesterday that the mall was shut due to COVID-19 curbs.
Shanghai, the most populous city in China, reported five new local infections of COVID-19, all asymptomatic, for Saturday, while 2,467 domestically transmitted cases were reported nationwide.
It has extended its weekly COVID-19 test requirement and extended free testing until the end of September in a bid to keep the virus in check, authorities said on Saturday.
The southern province of Hainan is now China’s worst hit region, with 494 symptomatic cases and 846 asymptomatic cases reported for Saturday.
Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan (孫春蘭) urged Hainan to achieve zero cases at the community level as soon as possible when she inspected several places on the island, including the Sanya Phoenix International Airport on Saturday, state media reported.
In Tibet, China removed three health officials from their posts for failing to prevent the spread of a recent COVID-19 outbreak.
The fired officials include the party secretary and director of the municipal health commission of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, as well as the party secretary of the city’s center for disease control and prevention, a local government statement said yesterday.
The dismissals were the result of the officials “failing to implement COVID prevention and control work well,” it said.
Tibet on Monday last week reported four COVID-19 infections, the first sign of the virus in the isolated region since a single case was found at the start of the pandemic in January 2020.
On Friday, Lhasa — currently under partial lockdown — logged 81 local cases.
The mountainous region is building new facilities to provide 2,000 beds in Lhasa and 1,000 in the city of Shigatse, and a team of health experts from Beijing has arrived to support its containment measures.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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