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No fewer than 50,000 students in the Chinese city of Wuhan have returned to school, more than three months after it was lockdown in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
The students returned to classrooms on Wednesday to meet new measures made by school authorities to contain the spread of the virus.
Face masks were given to each student while see-through or transparent plastic partitions on desks were put up to shield pupils from other people’s saliva in the classrooms.
The transparent protective units can be folded down and students are required to carry their partition with them when they go for lunch.
According to Daily Mail, they must eat in designated ‘canteens’ converted from classrooms and no more than 20 pupils are allowed in each room.
Wednesday’s back-to-school was the latest step in a gradual normalising of life in Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province.
Only the province’s oldest students were present on Wednesday, that is, vocational students and seniors who are due to take the make-or-break university entrance exams, as the junior and middle school students await the general return dates.
officials in Wuhan said students and staff must hav undergone COVID-19 tests before returning to school.
Some schools, in preparation for reopening, spaced out their desks and organised smaller classes sizes, according to a local media.
Thermal scanners greeted everyone walking through school gates and anyone with high temperature was barred from entry.
The COVID-19 pandemic has killed 4,633 people and infected 82,883 in China, according to Beijing’s official figures. As at Tuesday, there were 339 active cases across the country, including 26 patients who were in critical condition, but none of them was in Hubei Province, the authority claimed.
