Italy Begins In-Person Classes... More Than Half of Students Attend School

Temperature Check at Home or School Entrance Before Going to School

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Jin-gyu Lee] A significant number of frontline schools in Italy began face-to-face classes on the 14th.

This comes six months after schools were collectively closed on March 5 due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

According to local Italian media, about 5.6 million students, which is 67.5% of the total 8.3 million students, have returned to school. However, among the 20 regions nationwide, seven southern regions including Puglia and Calabria postponed the start of the semester by at least a week due to setbacks in quarantine preparations, leaving about one-third of all students staying at home.

The Italian government set a policy to resume normal classes for the September semester and has been preparing quarantine measures. To prevent infections, the government decided to supply single desks to classrooms nationwide and maintain a safety distance of more than 1 meter between students. Plans were also made to secure additional classroom space and recruit thousands of teachers.

Students must have their temperature checked at home or at the school entrance before attending school, and those aged six and older are required to wear masks on campus except during class time. In some schools, both teachers and students must wear masks during class. For physical education and other activities requiring physical exertion, masks are not worn, but students must maintain a distance of more than 2 meters from each other.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.