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Back to school in April. How to maintain social distancing in classrooms? Ask the students of an elementary school in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. In addition to face masks, all children wear cardboard hats with wings on the sides measuring 1.5 meters. There are them with animal forms. Others emulate the silhouette of the animated cars from the movie 'Cars'. But they all do their job: keep children away from each other.

This morning, through the website of the Chinese newspaper 'The Paper', we have also been able to follow live the return to the school of the ninth grade students to the Luwan secondary school in Shanghai. They do not wear hats, but between the desks there is a distance of more than two meters . Before entering the classrooms, the center staff takes the temperature of each student. At the end of the class, another temperature measurement and the cleaning staff disinfects the entire room.

The same scene is repeated at another secondary school in the city of Hohhot in the Inner Mongolia region. There are thermal imaging cameras throughout the building . And, inside the classrooms, individual partitions have been placed to separate some desks from others. During recess and lunch breaks, there are volunteer supervisors who ensure that children and adolescents meet the social distance. At schools in Guang'an City, Sichuan Province, students directly protect their faces with plastic visors. And they cannot come together in groups of more than three people.

Less than a thousand infected

Since the end of March, many schools in China have been gradually opening their centers to resume classes. From the official propaganda the premise is maintained that the pandemic is controlled. There are only 800 active infected of the 82,827 infections that have been reported in the Asian giant. Little by little, there is a return to normality and that the children return to face-to-face classes. Although, always, with the appropriate temperature and distance controls.

From this week almost all the schools will be reopened, including those of big cities like Shanghai or Beijing. In the capital, 254 secondary schools have opened their doors today to welcome 49,979 students. In Qinghai province, 11 million face masks, 13,000 digital thermometers and 1,054 doctors have been distributed to schools these days to supervise students during the beginning of classes.

In cities like Guangzhou, before starting classes, nucleic acid tests were carried out on 208,000 teachers and students in secondary and high school. In Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus, we will have to wait a few more weeks to see the classrooms full of fear of a second wave of infections.

180 million schoolchildren

Wang Qinnan , a teacher at the Qianhuang International Middle School in Jiangsu province, has detailed the specific steps being taken at her center after the opening of classes. "We measure the students' body temperature three times a day. Anyone who exceeds 37.3 ° will be isolated from the rest of their classmates and the principal will notify the health authorities," explains Wang. "The teachers take turns with the Security guards to also measure the temperature of the students. In the dining room, we have organized tables for eight people where only three can sit. And, for now, sports activities have been canceled, "continues the teacher.

If we go back two months ago, during the confinement, we find a country with 180 million school-age kids who were trapped in their homes. They had been absent from class since the coronvirus crisis began. At least, in person. Because primary and secondary students had to continue their lessons online or through television. In other words, the curriculum had been transferred from the classrooms to computers and to the public television channel. The latter had a daily schedule with English or history lessons . And also many teachers taught classes from their homes through 'livestreamed' platforms. The students, even in pajamas, could not miss them.

The Government prepared the country's three largest telecommunications operators, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, in addition to technology companies such as Huawei, Baidu and Alibaba, to support a platform with 90 terabytes of bandwidth and 7,000 servers, ensuring that up to 50 million students could be connected simultaneously. In addition, 600,000 teachers were made available to them, with a live broadcast service called Dingtalk, designed by Alibaba , to teach classes online.

Today, it is also reported that in cities with Chongqing, in southwest China, universities will open on May 11 . In eastern Fujian province, where schools have resumed classes, universities will return to normal on May 6.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Covid 19

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