Bhubaneswar: Odisha withholds the decision to reopen schools for Classes 1 to 5 amid a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases, the Odisha government on Sunday said that it was withholding its decision to reopen schools for students of Classes 1 to 5 from Monday.
School and mass education minister SR Dash, in a statement, said the decision was taken after officials visited various primary schools across the state and held discussions with the stakeholders.
"Keeping in view the rise in the number of daily cases and based on the feedback provided by parents across the state, we have decided not to reopen schools for students of Classes 1 to 5 from January 3," he stated.
Dash, however, maintained that physical classes for students of classes 6 to 10 will continue for now. He also said that offline examination, as scheduled earlier, will be conducted adhering to COVID-19 protocols.
Also Read: Five more test Omicron positive in Odisha
Odisha on Sunday registered 424 more coronavirus cases. As it registered 23 more omicron cases, raising the tally of the new variant of COVID-19 in the state to 37, a senior health department official said. 67 of the new patients are children below 18 years of age.
The State government has decided to postpone the reopening of the primary schools owing to the spike in Covid-19 cases in the past two days.
While 13 of them returned from Finland, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and Syria, 10 are local-contact cases, he said.
On Thursday, the coastal state had logged five omicron infections and the first such case on December 21. Odisha's coronavirus tally on Sunday mounted to 10,55,556 with 424 fresh cases. The death toll stood at 8,463.
(With agency inputs)
