ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mehmood on Thursday announced that a meeting will be held on Friday to review the coronavirus situation in Pakistan.
In a statement on Twitter, he said that the situation has to be reviewed before students can start going back to school. In order to finalise a date for reopening of educational institutions across the country, Shafqat has summoned a meeting of the provincial health and education ministers on Friday.
The minister said: “While I desperately want education to continue, the final decision will be on health grounds. Students’ wellbeing will always be a priority.”
On January 4, Shafqat had said that the government will make no compromise on children’s health and another meeting will be held to review the latest coronavirus situation in the country.
The federal government had earlier announced a phase-wise plan to reopen educational institutes from January 18 which were closed on November 26 to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Shafqat’s remarks come as Pakistan battles a second wave of the coronavirus with cases constantly on the rise. The country reported its biggest jump in coronavirus cases in nearly a month on Thursday.
Data issued by the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) showed that 3,097 people tested positive for Covid-19 across the country on January 13, raising the national tally to 511,921. The last time Pakistan’s single-day tally crossed the 3,000 mark was on December 18 last year when NCOC reported 3,179 infections.
