South Korean schools began welcoming back students on Wednesday for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Hundreds of thousands of high school seniors in South Korea were allowed to return to their schools Wednesday morning, while students in lower grades are expected to go back in phased steps in the coming weeks. Both students and teachers much have their temperatures taken before entering schools and wear face masks in classrooms.
Some 5.4 million students in South Korea have been taking classes online prior to Wednesday’s reopening of schools.
South Korea once had the largest novel coronavirus outbreak outside China, where the virus first emerged, but appears to have brought it under control with an extensive “trace, test and treat” strategy. A total of 11,110 people in the country have been diagnosed with COVID-19, of which 10,066 have recovered and 263 have died, according to South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
After relaxing its social-distancing restrictions earlier this month, South Korea saw a small yet sharp spike in new infections linked to reopened nightclubs in the capital, Seoul.
