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Starting from Saturday, schools in Beijing are to open for the new semester, with the capital city's education authority having taken strict measures to avoid virus risks, such as conducting grid management and tracking students' movements.

Every child's movements should be recorded by details, so that once a problem occurs the source can be rapidly traced, Li Yi, an official at the Beijing Education Commission, said on Monday, noting that grid management should be properly conducted on campus and unnecessary gatherings of people should be avoided as much as possible, the Shanghai-based news website thepaper.cn reported.

Schools in Beijing have been preparing for the new semester. According to thepaper.com, outside every classroom in Fengtai Experimental School in Fengtai district, where an outbreak took place in the Xinfadi market in June, hand sanitizers have been installed. Seats in cafes and reading rooms have been set apart.

"The demands and measures of virus prevention should be paid attention to. It is not an emergency mode, but a new normalcy," Li said.

According to Li, students do not need to wear face masks every second. They can take them off every 40 minutes to 1 hour.

Different classes also will take turns to use bathrooms, the report said.

A person in charge of the Fengtai Experimental School said that before starting teaching, the school will first offer students patriotic education, virus-prevention knowledge, security drills and psychological counseling, so that the students can return to campus life with ease.

Starting from August 15, the almost 1 million university students in Beijing started returning to campus. The Beijing Municipal Education Commission said at a press conference on August 14 that university students returning to Beijing must have proof of a negative nucleic acid test, with the cost to be borne by the school.

University campuses will mostly be closed, with no unauthorized people allowed to enter, and students will be prohibited from going off-campus as much as possible, China News Service reported.

There have been no new cases of domestic transmission of COVID-19 in the Chinese mainland for eight consecutive days as of Monday, following a sporadic resurgence of outbreaks in Beijing, Dalian and Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region since June.  

Global Times