The Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) has announced the reopening of schools and colleges in the city, owing to the drop in coronavirus cases.
Schools will open in a phased manner- with classes 9th-12th reopening from Feb 7 and classes from nursery to 8 from Feb 14.
It also announced that the night curfew will be shortened by an hour, from 11 pm to 5 am.
Offices will be allowed to function with 100% attendance.All restaurants in Delhi can now remain open till 11pm. Physical classes for nursery to class 8 will resume from February 14. Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said hybrid classes will continue; while colleges will be asked to discourage online classes and have offline classes instead. Unvaccinated teachers will not be permitted.
After DDMA gave the nod to withdraw the weekend curfew in the city last week, Friday’s meeting was to discuss further reopening. Reopening of schools, gyms and lifting of the night curfew were on the agenda, On Thursday, the health ministry and the education ministry gave a go-ahead to reopen schools, authorising the state governments to take the final call of the date of reopening schools.
The phase-wise reopening comes as the number of daily cases in Delhi has been on the decline after touching the record high of 28,867 on January 13. The city had recorded a positivity rate of 30.6 per cent on January 14, the highest during the ongoing wave of the pandemic.
Gym owners of Delhi have been pressing for the reopening of around 5,500 gyms in Delhi which employs around 1 lakh people. Recently, hundreds of gym owners took out a protest march to chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s residence with their demand that this sector has been neglected.