Bangladesh extends school shutdown to Jun 30

Bangladesh has decided to extend the shutdown of schools and other educational institutions to Jun 30 as the coronavirus pandemic situation continues to deteriorate.

“After consulting with the COVID-19 national advisory committee, the shutdown of all secondary and higher education institutions and Ebtedayee and Qawmi madrasas has been extended to Jun 30,” the Ministry of Education said in a statement on Saturday.

Schools across the country have remained closed due to the pandemic since March 2020.

The government has announced plans to reopen schools several times, but has backtracked in the face of a rising COVID caseload.

On May 26, Education Minister Dipu Moni expressed her hope that schools and colleges would be able to reopen on Jun 13 if there were no major changes to the pandemic situation. Universities would still have remained closed.

But rising cases in Bangladesh’s border districts in the past two weeks have resulted in an extension. 

The decision to extend the shutdown has been taken “in response to the deteriorating coronavirus pandemic situation in various regions and the partial lockdown imposed in certain areas to protect the health of students, teachers, employees and guardians and to ensure overall security,” the education ministry said.

The government reported 43 new deaths from the disease over a 24-hour period on Friday, taking the total to 13,032 and the caseload surged by 2,454 to a total of 822,849.

Globally, over 174.89 million people have been infected by the novel coronavirus and 3.77 million have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.