The government had allowed schools to resume offline classes for students of classes 8 to 12 from February 3, while open-air learning sessions for students of up to class 7 had started recently under the state government's 'Paray Shikshalay' initiative. The West Bengal government Monday announced that schools would be allowed to resume offline classes for students of classes 1 to 7 from Wednesday i.e. February 16 – after being suspended for more than two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
As per a notification issued by the state government, all Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) centres will also reopen from Wednesday. “A separate standard operating procedure will be issued by the School Education Department in this regard,” stated the notification.
The government had allowed schools to resume offline classes for students of classes 8 to 12 from February 3, while open-air learning sessions for students of up to class 7 had started recently under the state government’s ‘Paray Shikshalay’ initiative.
Further easing restrictions imposed earlier due to the pandemic, the West Bengal government also lifted all restrictions on incoming domestic flights from any location in the country on Monday.
“As per the latest guidelines by the state government, there shall be no restrictions on incoming domestic flights from any location in the country but subject to the condition that passengers are either fully vaccinated or an RT-PCR test is conducted within 72 hours from flight departure time,” said an official of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport.
However, the night curfew will still be imposed in some parts of the city from midnight to 5 am.
Meanwhile, West Bengal registered 320 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, according to a health bulletin. The new cases took the state’s overall caseload to 20,11,221. The state’s tally of active cases stands at 11,626 – 10,785 patients in home isolation and 160 in hospitals. Over the past 24 hours, the state also recorded 23 fatalities, taking the toll to 21,040.
Till now, 2,37,88,421 samples have been tested in the state, with 24,776 such clinical examinations conducted over the past 24 hours. West Bengal’s positivity rate currently stands at 1.29 per cent.
The districts that registered the highest number of Covid-19 cases are North 24 Parganas (49) and Kolkata (34).
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