Beijing, February 13 More than 300 million people between teachers and students are returning to face-to-face classes in China this week after the “zero covid” policy is dismantled and after the Lunar New Year holiday break.
The semester has started on different dates depending on regional policies, and it is the first face-to-face school period since the country decided to dismantle the “zero covid” strategy at the beginning of last December.
In the capital, Beijing, more than a million primary and secondary school students are returning to class today, the China Daily newspaper reports. For the first time in months, they won’t have to show negative nucleic acid test results to enter classes.
However, schools will need to follow certain protocols this semester: “If we find positive results, our school will activate emergency measures. Those infected will have to take tests and will only be able to enter class once they test negative. If the number of people who contract a fever of more than five in one day, or reaches 10 percent of the total number of students, the class will be suspended for five days,” said the principal of a school in the southern city of Guangdong. on state television CCTV.
The return to class represents another step in the return to normality in the Asian country after the Lunar New Year holidays, which fell in 2023 between January 21 and 27, a period during which some experts had predicted a spread of covid due to the high number of trips and hospital pressure in rural areas, which have scarcer health resources.
But according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control (CDC), the peak of deaths in hospitals due to covid was on January 4, with 4,273, while the number of hospitalizations due to covid reached its ceiling of 1, 6 million on January 5. .
According to the latest official figures released by the CDC over the weekend, a total of 912 people died of covid in hospitals between February 3 and February 9.
After nearly three years of severe restrictions, lockdowns and near-total border closures that eventually crystallized into protests in various parts of the country, China began dismantling the “zero covid” directive in early December, and on the 8 January, it reduced the management of the disease from category A – maximum level of danger – to category B, thus marking the end of this strategy in practice. ECE
jco/aa/gcf
(Picture / Video)