With the Telangana government preparing to remove all restrictions and open both schools and colleges from July 1, and the Karnataka government likely to decide on a staggered reopening soon, the centre is urging utmost caution.
At the COVID press briefing today, Dr V.K. Paul, member, NITI Aayog, and part of the national panel on COVID, said schools could be considered medium-to-large gatherings, which give "opportunity" to the virus. He said that these gatherings comprise students, teachers, and non-teaching staff, and only when we are better protected can we be confident of reopening them.
Paul noted that the number of cases declined rapidly over the past few days because there were restrictions in place, and there are still several restrictions, especially against big gatherings. "When to open up is a concern that is under considerable discussion, but we have to be extremely cautious [when making this decision],'' he said. Paul noted that in some places, educational institutions had opened up, but had to shut down because of the virus spread.
Students have been badly hit by the pandemic, with a second academic year having started online, and there being no sign of when in-person classes would resume. This is especially so for school students. College students, mostly being in the 18 plus age group, still have some chance of attending classes physically at some point, if the vaccination programme speeds up and they all get inoculated. However, there are still no vaccines approved for minors in India. Although scientific data so far shows that minors are not as severely hit as adults, observing social distancing protocol among them is an even greater challenge. Also, even a mild infection can have serious repercussions in terms of time lost and the impact on general health, especially if it spreads amongst a large swathe of students at one go.
Parents themselves are mostly not keen to send their children to school till their safety is reassured, which doesn't seem possible in the present situation. In Telangana, both parents and students bodies, have protested against the proposed reopening. Last year, schools had begun opening for the board year students, in a staggered manner, but the second wave shut them down again. In many residential college campuses, the infection spread among students and hostels had to shut down again. Some hostels were even declared containment zones.
