BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Students in Lebanon will return to the classroom starting next month, the education minister said Monday, amid fears an accelerating economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic would prevent schools from reopening.
Rights groups have decried an “education catastrophe,” with more than a million children in Lebanon out of school since the country’s Covid-19 outbreak began in February last year.
Other students are at risk of never returning, the groups have warned.
Classrooms will gradually reopen starting September 27, outgoing education minister Tarek Majzoub told a press conference on Monday.
The decision covers both private and public schools as well as technical learning centers. All are to reopen by October 4 at the latest, he added.
Lebanon had moved to distanced learning in March last year due to the pandemic, with intermittent returns to the classroom for some students.
But power cuts, Internet outages and the economic crisis have made online instruction a luxury.
Meanwhile, Egypt will vaccinate all 4.5 million of its state employees against COVID-19 in August and September as it seeks to accelerate vaccinations ahead of a likely fourth wave of infections, the health minister said on Monday.
The country’s infection rate is still low but started to increase last week and the upward curve is expected to continue for a while, Hala Zayed told a briefing, adding that a significant increase is expected in late September.
“It is important for the Egyptian government and the political leadership that we work to intensify vaccinations in the coming period,” Zayed said.
As part of the program, all workers in pre-university education, university employees and university students - a total of more than 5 million people - will be vaccinated before the start of the academic year in October, she said.
So far, about 10 million people out of Egypt’s population of just over 100 million have registered online to get vaccinated and nearly 7.5 million have received at least one dose, Zayed said.