Schools in Mysuru city, taluk to reopen after week-long closure

DC had asked for suspension of classes from Jan. 12 after COVID-19 cases spiked

The decision to reopen schools was taken in consultation with officials from the Departments of Health and Public Instruction.

A day after the government lifted weekend curfew, schools in Mysuru city and taluk will reopen from Monday for physical classes following an order from Deputy Commissioner Bagadi Gautham, who had ordered for closure of schools and suspension of physical classes for LKG to class 9 as a precautionary measure over COVID-19 spike.

Though the daily cases continue to remain high, particularly in the city, the decision to reopen schools for physical classes was taken in consultation with the officials from the Departments of Health and Public Instruction. Accordingly, the Deputy Commissioner rescinded his earlier order and issued an order for recommencement of offline classes from January 22, taking all necessary precautions as directed by the Government.

Instead of considering the entire city and the taluk for containment measures for combating the pandemic, it has now been decided to consider the particular primary and high school for containment steps in case of a report of cases in its place of shutting down the schools completely.

The Deputy Commissioner had instructed schools to conduct online classes for the students, after he ordered for closure of schools from January 12.

In his first order, the Deputy Commissioner had ordered for suspension of offline classes even for class 10. However, he revised his order and allowed physical classes in view of their forthcoming public examinations for which the physical classes were said to be necessary for their preparations.

After a single-day highest cases of 1,900 and four-digit cases for a few days, the cases dropped to three-digits with 915 cases on Friday. But the number of deaths are rising with three fatalities due to COVID-19 reported on Friday.

Notably, 1,544 were discharged, which is highest since many months, taking the active case tally to 8,976. As many as 188 cases and 23 cases are admitted in government and private hospitals respectively with nearly 90% of infected persons home isolated in the district, as on Friday.

The infection is said to be mild and moderate considering the number of home isolated which is said to be manageable at home taking necessary medicines, the health officials said. About 9,708 swab samples were tested on Friday.