Normal schooling resumes next week

The educational activities across the country will return to normalcy from next week, after less than two years of interruptions because of different waves of coronavirus pandemic, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) announced on Thursday.

The NCOC, which serves as the nerve centre of the government’s unified effort to stem the pandemic spread said that the decision had been taken in view of a decline in the Covid-19 spread and a stepped-up national vaccination campaign.

“Based on the reduced level of Covid disease spread and the launch of the school vaccination program, it has been decided in today’s NCOC meeting to allow all educational institutions to start normal classes from 11th October,” Planning Minister Asad Umar, who heads the NCOC, said in a tweet.

Education activities were closed after coronavirus cases first emerged in the country in February 2020. The classes resumed briefly after some six months but had to be suspended again as the second wave of the disease surfaced towards the end of last year.

Then there came a severe third wave in the first quarter of this year. In the summer the disease spurred again which experts dubbed the fourth wave. In the meantime, the government cancelled the examinations last year, while scaled-back exams were conducted this year.

In recent weeks, the Covid-19 is showing a persistent decline. For the past few days, the national Covid positivity ratio had also plummeted to below 3%. The experts say that the government’s vaccination campaign had played a major role in boosting immunity against the pandemic.

The NCOC said in its daily update on Thursday that the national positivity ratio during the past 24 hours was 2.82%, with 1,453 Covid positive cases from 51,343 tests. It added that 2,934 patients were under treatment in critical condition in various Covid dedicated healthcare facilities of the country.

During the past 24 hours, some 46 patients died due to the deadly virus, taking the nationwide death toll from the disease to 28,032. As of Thursday, the national caseload of the disease stood at 1,255,521, according to the NCOC data.

(WITH INPUT FROM APP)