On August 11, the Maharashtra government announced a big relief to restaurants and malls by announcing an extension in timing. However, it has today decided to postpone the reopening of schools. As per the earlier directive schools were scheduled to re-start from August 17. This decision was taken after a meeting of the COVID-19 Task Force on Wednesday.
Even earlier the task force had recommended not to open schools in the state, They had even suggested that the places of worship too should not be opened at the moment.
The meeting that was held on August 11, Wednesday was chaired by Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte and attended by Task Force members, education and health department officials as well as a few district collectors, was held to decide on reopening of schools.
It decided that while some of the schools in rural areas, where there is no threat from coronavirus will continue to function, all other schools in the state will not resume from August 17 as was planned earlier. The schools in the state have been shut since the nationwide lockdown was announced in March 2020.
At the moment, offline classes are going on only for students studying in class VII-XII. However, there are certain restrictions in place for these classes and all COVID-19 protocols need to be strictly adhered to. For now, other students have to make do with just online classes.
One of the arguments that were presented by Minority Affairs Minister Nawab Malik. Giving examples of other states like Punjab, where schools were allowed to reopen, he shared that there had been a sharp increase in the number of juvenile COVID-19 patients. There were others that believed that since there is no vaccination in place for children, they may be more vulnerable to infection in case schools reopen. Moreover, it is also been pointed that with children getting them to follow all the COVID-19 protocols may be a hard task.
Now, the Task Force, Education Department officials will meet and discuss the matter with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray who would take a final call on the issue.
As far as the vaccination for the children go, it is expected that Zydus Cadila's vaccine may get approval as early as this week.
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