Reopening of Schools: Ministers meeting today for final decision

Decision to reopen schools from January 18^th Monday, will be finalized today in a meeting of country’s education and health ministers in Islamabad.

According to the details, the ministers will decide about opening of educational institutions from Monday or extend the closure for a few more weeks.

The federal and provincial education and health ministers will attend the meeting of National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) which will be chaired by Planning Minister Asad Umar.

Health authorities could recommend delaying the reopening of schools for a few weeks as they consider the ongoing second wave of Covid-19 more lethal than the first one.

The sources said the education ministers want reopening of schools from class 9th to 12 as per the announced schedule from Jan 18.

Shafqat Mehmood in a tweet on Thursday said: “While I desperately want education to continue, the final decision will be on health grounds. Students’ well-being will always be a priority.”

Pakistanis Vote for closing Schools

A major chunk of social media users in Pakistan took to Instagram, previous day and voted for closing schools amid the second wave of novel coronavirus pandemic.

Twitter users also expressed their concerns on the reopening of educational institutions from January 18^th, with hashtag #Shafqatmehmood also trending on top.

88 percent of people think that schools should be closed amid the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 10,000 lives in the country since its outbreak.

Whereas 12 percent are of the view that educational institutions should be reopened.

According to the social media users, when schools were closed nearly 2500 cases were reporting and now over 3000 cases are reporting and Education Ministries decided to open schools and colleges.

They appealed to reconsider the decision and said that millions of lives are on stake.

Coronavirus Situation in Pakistan

Pakistan on Friday reported 514,338 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus after the fresh inclusion of 2,417 infections in a single day.

According to the national dashboard on COVID-19, 45 more people succumbed to the disease taking national death tally to 10,863. With 2,072 more recoveries in the past 24 hours, the total toll has risen to 469,306. The active cases toll now stands at 34,169.