COVID-19 Impact: Schools for Classes 1 to 9 closed in Mumbai until January 31

As per the official notification, the classes for all the students studying in Classes 1 to 9 and Class 11 will be immediately shifted online until further notice.

With Maharashtra recording over 11,000 COVID-19 cases, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) today announced that all schools in the Mumbai and Greater Mumbai Municipal areas will remain closed until January 31, 2921. As per the official notification, the classes for all the students studying in Classes 1 to 9 and Class 11 will be immediately shifted online until further notice. However, the offline classes will continue for students who will be appearing for the SSC, HSC or Class 10 and 12 Board Exams 2022.

Earlier, the schools in the state were reopened on December 15. The state had reported 11,877 new coronavirus cases on Sunday which was 29 per cent higher than Saturday. Mumbai's Sunday spike was also higher than that of Saturday by 27 per cent higher.

The BMC has also released operating guidelines for all schools, as per which all schools (affiliated to all boards) in the Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation area have been closed for all classes – except Classes 10th and 12th. Classes 1 to 9 and Class 11 students would continue with the learning activities in online mode effectively immediately. Schools will continue with online classes until January 31, 2021 – upon which further review of the situation would be done – all the teaching and learning for these classes would continue in online mode as per the earlier instructions for the same.

On Sunday, Maharashtra also recorded 50 new cases of the new Omicron variant with most of the cases (38) reported from Pune. With this Maharashtra's overall count of the cases of the fast-spreading variant has reached 510, including 328 cases from Mumbai.

Students in the age group of 15 to 18 years who are eligible to be vaccinated in municipal schools as well as private schools may be called to the school to be vaccinated. Students would be notified to attend the immunization center as per the plan.

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