Hong Kong postpones school re-opening till Lunar New Year amid COVID-19 crisis

In order to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, Hong Kong has decided to postpone its school re-opening to Lunar New Year. Initially, the schools were supposed to re-open on January 10. However, now the restrictions on in-person classes have been extended till the lunar new year holidays, which are scheduled to begin on February 12. 

The current situation in Hong Kong 

The earlier restrictions had kept nearly 900,000 students working at home for over four months. According to reports, over two-thirds of parents, regardless of income, believed that their kids were having difficulty learning at home. Moreover, a survey conducted by The Society for Community Organisation (SoCO) reportedly also noted that out of nearly 600 low- income students, 70 per cent did not have access to computers and 28 per cent had no broadband at home. According to a tally by the Johns Hopkins University, Hong Kong has a total of 9,018 cases with 151 fatalities. Earlier, after a drop in coronavirus cases, Hong Kong also started relaxing social distancing norms in the city. The Chinese government offered mass coronavirus testing for all Hong Kong residents starting this week. As per January 4, the city reported 53 new cases, out of which 43 were local. 

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Recently, the city banned travellers from the UK due to the new strain of the coronavirus that has emerged. The new variant of the novel coronavirus has been flagged for spreading rapidly across the UK. Even though it is a well-known fact that viruses mutate all the time and some of them even die out, it is a very rare occasion when the new strains trigger dramatic changes.

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The city's authority have approved new regulations that would permit the use of COVID-19 vaccines. Carrie Lam on Wednesday said that new regulations would help the city to empower the health minister to approve the use of vaccines in the city. The plan includes offering free vaccinations to its 7.5 million residents. According to the reports by AP, Lam said that the government has fianlised agreements to obtain 22.5 million vaccines from AstraZeneca. 

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