The Odisha government is not likely to open schools in the month of September in the wake of sharp rise in COVID-19 cases in the State.
The way COVID-19 cases are increasing, there is little chance of situation becoming normal in September, School and Mass Education Minister Sameer Ranjan Dash said while speaking to the media after unfurling the Tricolor at Jajpur.
The State government is contemplating to launch a new programme ‘Siksha Sampark Yojana’, under which the teachers will visit villages of the students facing cellular connectivity problems.
“Teachers would find out ways to impart teaching to a small group of students, preferably two days in a week,” said Mr. Dash.
Earlier, the Minister said only 22 lakh out of the 60 lakh children in the State were availing e-education due to unavailability of mobile connectivity.
He said the government would soon come out with revised syllabus in a week as considerable time has been lost due to the pandemic.
Odisha on Saturday registered its highest single day COVID-19 spike by reporting 2,496 cases. The State’s tally jumped to 57,126 cases. Nine persons died of COVID-19, taking the State’s death toll to 333 on Saturday.
There has been a steady rise in the cases across all districts in the month of August.
The State government, however, said it was increasing per day tests to nearly 50,000. On August 14, it conducted 47,887 tests – highest in a day so far.
Positivity rate falling
The government claimed the positivity rate was coming down sharply. On July 21, 10,000 tests were conducted and 1,078 samples were found to be positive. So, the positivity rate was 10.78%. Over the next three weeks, the tests were increased by five times to close to 50,000, whereas positivity rate came down to around 5.2%.