By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: The government is planning a new testing strategy for educational institutions to contain the spread of coronavirus after reopening on September 15.
The National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) met on Wednesday with Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar took stock of updates related to opening up of schools and testing strategy for educational institutions.
A final decision on reopening of educational institutes will be made on September 7, as previously said by the government.
Asad Umar said the sequence designed to open up educational institutions had been agreed upon by the Ministry of Education. However, the next major challenge was to enforce standard operating procedures (SOPs) and health guidelines around 300,000 educational institutions across the country.
The forum described a four-strand strategy which was devised for testing in educational institutions. The participants were told that the strategy had been designed with the 20 major high-risk cities – which comprised 76 per cent of the total COVID cases in the country – kept in mind.
It added that the students under this strategy would be randomly screened whereas screening of the teachers would be carried out periodically.
Last month, the NCOC had suggested that all educational institutes in the country should be reopened with a top to bottom approach and on a rotational basis.
The meeting was attended by representatives of various educational institutions, including public and private sector institutions and madaris, to reach consensus-based decisions on the opening of various institutions.
The educational sector representatives were informed that the NCOC’s suggestions had been finalised after lengthy consultations with international experts, academia and think tanks.
All participants were briefed on the current coronavirus situation prevailing globally, regionally and in the country. A total of 441 new cases of the novel coronavirus surfaced in the last 24 hours, bringing the national tally to 296,590, said NCOC on Wednesday.
18 more people succumbed to the highly contagious disease during this period, pushing the death toll from the virus to 6,318.
The number of active cases has gone down to 8,813 as 281,459 COVID-19 patients have recovered from the disease. There are 1,039 patients under treatment in 735 hospitals across the country, out of whom 90 are on ventilators.
Meanwhile, the government of Punjab has reported 89 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 96,921 in the province.
According to the Punjab Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department, five more people have died of the disease in the last 24 hours. The number of people who died of the disease in the province has reached 2,204.
