PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has ordered the closure of educational institutions in Peshawar district for two weeks from March 15 following an increase in coronavirus positivity rate.

The order was issued on the directives of the National Command and Operation Centre to take preventive measures against the virus in cities with high incidence.

In a notification issued here on Thursday, the elementary and secondary education department declared that in line with the NCOC’s March 10 decision, the public and private schools, colleges and universities along with seminaries in the province will remain closed from March 15 to March 28 in view of a surge in deaths and cases caused by coronavirus.

It added that staff members of educational institutions would attend offices complying with the standard operating procedures.

Coronavirus claims nine more lives in province

Many schools and colleges have announced online classes for the period.

In the day, Covid-19 claimed nine lives in the province.

Six of them were reported in Peshawar and one each in Mardan, Swabi and Kohat, according to a health department report.

The report said the province recorded 330 new coronavirus cases during the last 24 hours.

A total of 2,138 people have lost life to Covid-19 in the province since its outbreak early last year, while 750,52 residents have been infected with the virus.

Officials in the health department said the NCOC’s recommendations had been applied to Peshawar district, which had recorded half of the province’s deaths and cases by Covid-19.

They said the NCOC had decided that any city with 10 per cent virus positivity rate or above should close educational institutions for two weeks as part of the strategy to check the infection spread.

The officials said special assistant to the prime minister on health services Dr Faisal Sultan listened to the representatives of all provinces regarding Covid-19 during a meeting in Islamabad and decided that students in the Covid-19 hotspot districts would go to schools once a week to get assignments to do at home.

They said an education minister argued in the meeting as to why the school closures were over emphasised when markets were bustling with people and other activities were under way as usual.

However, Dr Faisal Sultan, a specialist of infectious diseases, argued that the people in markets passed very little time together and were less exposed to the virus than the students, who remained present in their classrooms for at least six hours at a stretch and thus, becoming highly vulnerable.

In schools’ chances of getting infected more than any other place, they said.

Officials said the Covid-19 positivity rate was surging in Charsadda, Nowshera, Malakand, Kohat and Dir areas last week but it had come down during the last two days, so educational institutions won’t be closed there.

They said those districts would be closely monitored and if the coronavirus cases increased, the government would order the closure of educational institutions.

The officials said educational institutions would be closed in any district with high Covid-19 incidence.

They said the children were often asymptomatic even if they suffered from coronavirus and remained safe but they acted as the virus transmitters and could infect the elderly people and those with co-morbidities in their homes and neighbourhoods.

The officials said the second dose of Covid-19 vaccine for frontline health workers was in progress in the designated hospitals.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2021