Mumbai schools reopening: Classes for 1-7 will not begin from 1 Dec; here's the new date

Mumbai, Nov 25: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Tuesday announced that the schools in Mumbai for classes 1-7 will not begin on 1 December in view of the emergence of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in the world.

The classes, instead, will begin two weeks later, i.e., from December 15, the BMC said. The Maharashtra government had given its nod for the reopening of the classes last week for standard 1-4 in rural areas and standard 1-7 in urban areas from December 1.

Based on the early evidence, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday warned that the global risk from the Omicron variant, which was detected in Africa, is "very high", claiming the mutated coronavirus could lead to surges with "severe consequences."

In Mumbai, at least 1,000 travellers landed in Mumbai in the last fortnight from African countries, a senior official of the city civic body said. Swab samples were collected of at least 100 travellers out of the 466 whose list was received so far, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani told PTI on Monday.

Schools across Maharashtra resumed physical sessions for classes 5 to 12 from October 4 after being shut for over 18 months in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Maharashtra, physical classes in schools were stopped in March 2020, after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.