This is what the school looks like during the coronavirus pandemic . What rules should students in Germany follow?
The pandemic that took over 250,000 lives in just four months and contaminated over 3.7 million earthlings turned everything upside down! On Monday, May 4, schools in Germany opened their doors. But the traditional noise during breaks did not resound in the hallways. The children obeyed the rules imposed by the COVID-19 terror.
Before the pandemic, school and high school courtyards resounded with the merry laughter of children. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has ordered schools and high schools to open on May 4, after closing their doors in early March.
But the children discovered a rigid environment, in which the rules imposed by the measures to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus put play, jokes and childhood in the background. The 10th grade students at the Schillerschule in Ettlingen have been preparing for exams since last week. On Monday, May 4, the little ones from the gymnasium and primary school also showed up at the same school.
The hallways of the school were marked with yellow stripes and posters with strict instructions were mounted on the walls: keeping a distance of 1.5 meters, using face masks, gloves and regular hand washing.
According to Deutsche Welle, only children in the final grades were able to go to school on May 4, to avoid the congestion of educational institutions. The benches for two students were used for one child and the whole school is subjected to a strict disinfection ritual performed at three key times of the day: in the morning, at noon, between shifts and in the evening. At the entrance to the classrooms, pumps with alcohol-based disinfectants were installed.
The fear in the souls of parents who send their children to school is indescribable. And in China, primary and secondary schools opened their doors on April 27. Even high school students were able to return to campuses on April 27, and students will resume classes on May 11. The rules for distancing and preventing the spread of the new coronavirus are strictly observed. In primary school, parents made children's one meter long sticks to be worn as "wings" on the back that would force other classmates not to get closer than a meter.
The capital of China, on alert after the discovery of the first cases of COVID-19 in the last two months
Beijing closed two markets on Friday and postponed resumption of primary school classes following the discovery of three new cases of COVID-19 in the city after two months in which no new cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the Chinese capital.
The first country affected by the new coronavirus at the end of last year, China has meanwhile managed to slow down the epidemic considerably, with only a few new cases of disease being reported daily in recent weeks, most of them among people returning from abroad.
But a case of COVID-19 of unknown origin was confirmed in Beijing on Thursday, followed by two more on Friday. The last case of COVID-19 confirmed before them dates from mid-April. From the beginning of the epidemic until then, a total of 597 cases of COVID-19 and 9 deaths have been confirmed in Beijing, agerpres.ro reports.
The last two contaminated people are employees of the Meat Research Center. One of them had recently visited the eastern city of Qingdao. Two markets in Beijing where these two people were were completely or partially closed on Friday and will be disinfected.
Authorities also decided to postpone the resumption of schooling for three primary classes until an indefinite date, after it was initially agreed that schools would reopen on Monday. Pupils in the Chinese capital have gradually returned to school since the end of April, after three months of forced vacation and distance learning.
China seems to be hit by a new wave of coronavirus. People in the northeast of the country can only leave the house for strictly necessary shopping. This time it would be a form of the virus that has mutated. The symptoms of the infection appear later and the disease is more difficult to cure. Authorities imposed containment measures on the affected area.
Chinese officials have imposed quarantine restrictions on two cities in northeast China's Jilin province. Jilin is part of a larger province in the Dongbei region - home to more than 100 million people. Health authorities have raised the alert in the area, writes express.co.uk.
About 40,000 residents of Jilin and Shulan were tested for coronavirus after officials were alerted to a possible new outbreak.
In Jilin, authorities stopped all major transport links to and from neighboring cities until further notice. In Shulan, all villages and residential complexes were closed after a similar outbreak of COVID-19 cases last week.
Residents are allowed to leave their homes only for essential reasons, but not more than two hours, once every two days. However, delivery services have been largely shut down, and anti-fever drugs are banned from pharmacies to prevent people from hiding their symptoms.
Schools, public places and public transport have been closed. Children can only play outside if they wear masks, and health care workers have returned to protective equipment, writes Bloomberg.
Strict measures have raised concerns, as people believed the nation's worst epidemic was over. The fear spread to nearby areas, although no cases have been officially reported in those places.
The virus in the new outbreak has mutated
The new virus that hit northeast China is behaving differently from the one in Wuhan, and researchers say it has undergone mutations. Patients in China's new outbreaks appear to be carrying the virus for a longer period of time and need a longer recovery time. In addition, the symptoms of the disease are felt more than two weeks after infection, say Chinese specialists, which makes it difficult to detect new cases.
However, it seems that patients rarely have a fever, and the virus affects only the lungs, not the other organs as is the case with the form discovered in Wuhan. Moreover, it is believed that the new form of coronavirus is actually exported from abroad, the analysis of the strain of the new form of the virus resembling that of Russia.
China may be able to launch a vaccine against SARS-Cov-2 by the end of the year, a Chinese government agency announced on social media on Saturday.
The vaccine - developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products and the Institute of Virology - was administered to more than 2,000 people in phase 2 clinical trials, the Public Asset Management and Supervision Commission (SASAC) said.
According to a message dated May 29, broadcast on the Chinese social network WeChat, the vaccine could be marketed as early as the end of this year or at the beginning of 2021.
The two institutes that developed the vaccine have links to the Sinopharm pharmaceutical group, which in turn is controlled by SASAC.
According to SASAC, the Beijing Institute of Biological Products is able to produce 100-120 million doses per year.
Five vaccines are currently being tested on humans in China.
China and India on the brink of war! 20 Indian soldiers killed after a battle with the Chinese army
At least 20 Indian soldiers have died as a result of a clash with Chinese forces in the Kashmir region, an area around which there is an old dispute between China and India. It is the first time in the last 45 years that incidents in the area have taken such a turn, BBC reports.
The Indian military initially announced that three of its soldiers had been killed after confirming that both sides had victims. Later, on Tuesday, Indian officials said that several critically ill soldiers had died from their injuries.
The Indian Foreign Minister accused China of violating an agreement reached a week ago regarding the Galwan Valley border control. According to India's statement, "a violent confrontation took place after the Chinese side tried to change the state of affairs in the region unilaterally."
In turn, the Chinese Foreign Minister says that the Indians crossed the border twice a month, that they "provoked and attacked the Chinese personnel in the area, which led to a physical confrontation between the forces of the two sides".
Local media in India wrote that the soldiers were "killed in a fight", but the army did not confirm this.
The daily toll of new coronavirus cases worldwide has reached a new record of more than 150,000, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Friday, warning that the pandemic is accelerating, the DPA reports.
Nearly half of the new infections reported by WHO on Wednesday came from the Americas, while rising numbers came from South Asia and the Middle East.
The world is in a new and dangerous phase, the WHO director-general told a news conference in Geneva.
"There is an increased risk because many people no longer want to be isolated in their homes, and governments are eager to reopen their societies and economies," he said.
"We call on all states and all people to be extremely vigilant," added Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.