The Hanoi People’s Committee on Thursday approved a proposal by the local education department to let tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders resume offline learning on December 6, given larger vaccine coverage and the central government’s policy of living safely with COVID-19.

The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students will join ninth graders in Hanoi’s Ba Vi District and 17 suburban districts and towns that resumed offline lessons on November 9 and 22, respectively.

Meanwhile, pupils from first to eighth grades will stick to online classes and kindergarteners will remain home.

The students must only attend either morning or afternoon classes each day, while schools must not offer meals and close their canteens as part of the requirements by the municipal People’s Committee for COVID-19 prevention and control.

The students are also advised to bring their own water to face-to-face classrooms.

School management boards must arrange teachers who have been fully vaccinated for in-person lessons while letting the remaining teachers take charge of online classes only.

Schools with students living in high-risk areas should consider combining both offline and online learning modes.

In the remaining 12 districts, all elementary and middle school students will continue remote learning while schooling activities for kindergarteners will remain suspended.

Authorities in Hanoi have required all students to stay home and switch to remote learning since May 4 amid a serious COVID-19 outbreak.

Hanoi has documented more than 11,400 COVID-19 infections since the fourth virus wave hit Vietnam on April 27.

The capital logged 367, 467, and 499 cases on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, respectively.

Thursday also saw the city’s highest daily count since the beginning of the fourth wave.

Over 6.6 million out of eight million people of the city have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, with more than 5.5 million of them fully vaccinated, according to the national COVID-19 vaccination portal.

Local authorities plan to vaccinate over 95 percent of local children aged 12 to 17 from the remaining months of this year to the end of the first quarter of 2022, with those from 16 to 17 years old getting the shots first.

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