The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training has brought forward a plan to reopen offline classes for ninth and twelfth graders from December since the metropolis is deploying a COVID-19 vaccination plan for local children.

Only ninth and twelfth graders who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be allowed to return to bricks-and-mortar classrooms in the next two months, according to the proposal made by Nguyen Van Hieu, director of the education department, at a meeting on Friday morning.

The scheme is pending the approval from the municipal People’s Committee.

Schools across Ho Chi Minh City have been shuttered since May 10 for COVID-19 prevention and control, with students largely switching to online learning.

As functional forces are returning over 250 schools, which were requisitioned for the use of COVID-19 quarantine and treatment, to the education sector, the implementation of the back-to-school plan will depend on the virus transmission risk in each district, according to Hieu.

The director said nearly 40,000 students from 12 to 17 years old in the city’s 21 districts and Thu Duc City have received a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine dose on on Wednesday and Thursday, the first two days of the city’s ongoing kid vaccination drive. 

The first phase of the inoculation campaign is expected to conclude this week.

In addition, Friday morning’s meeting highlighted such issues as the employment of administrative workers at schools, a dearth of music and art teachers, students’ lack of essential equipment for online study, social insurance schemes for non-public kindergarten teachers, and the delay of school construction projects.

In his remarks, Duong Anh Duc, deputy chairman of the municipal People’s Committee, said that the city’s educational and health officials, together with district-level authorities, will refurbish school campuses to welcome back students aged 12 to 17 as soon as all safety requirements are met.

Ho Chi Minh City has been the biggest epicenter in the country since the fourth outbreak began on April 27, with over 429,000 local cases.

The city of about nine million people had administered over 12.9 million vaccine doses as of Friday, with more than 5.6 million people fully inoculated.

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