China's Covid resurgence spreading to schools, kindergarten

New Delhi: The newest revival of Covid-19 in China has shown a tendency to spread across schools, harming pupils and kindergarten children, with outbreaks found in at least four locations, as per an IANS report.

The number of new local infections in Heihe, Heilongjiang Province, has been high in recent days, reaching a new high of 44 cases.

There were 189 confirmed domestically transmitted cases in the province, with 184 of them coming from Heihe.

At least 20 confirmed cases in Heihe have some relation with schools and kindergartens, affecting at least one primary school and two kindergartens. A local university -- Heihe College -- was closed after 10 close contacts were found, local authorities said.

Two sites of outbreaks in Hebei Province -- Xinji and Shenze -- were also found to have been related to schools and kindergartens. On Wednesday, Hebei found 23 new confirmed cases, 20 from Shenze county and the other three from Xinji.

Students were among the 20 confirmed cases in Shenze, with the youngest said to be 2 years old. The other three from Xinji were all 11-year-old students at an elementary school.

Gansu, which reported at least 12 confirmed cases among students, suspended in-person classes in 10,818 schools and kindergartens - 62 percent of the total local schools. The move affected 2.84 million students and 250,000 teachers.

All universities in Gansu will be under closed-loop management.

Beijing's Chaoyang district also suspended classes at 18 schools after outbreaks of confirmed cases recently.

Zhang Yuexin, an expert on epidemic prevention and control, told the Global Times on Thursday that epidemic resurgences relating to schools should draw greater attention because infections of students could easily lead to transmission among communities. As young people have relatively lower vaccination rates, they could be naturally more vulnerable to the virus.