HCMC – After nearly four months of online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Dong Nai Province has allowed 12 schools to pilot restarting in-person classes from today, November 22.

These schools, located in areas at low risk of the Covid-19 community spread, are allowing only high school seniors to return to in-person classes, VnExpress news site reported. The province’s anti-Covid steering committee will assess the results after a week and accordingly allow more schools to reopen so that the province can gradually adapt to the pandemic, according to the provincial government. Vice Chairman of Dong Nai Province Nguyen Son Hung said that the province has sped up the vaccination of children aged 12 to 17 so that students can get back to in-person instruction as soon as possible. All students aged 12 and older have been vaccinated against Covid, with high-school students taking their first shots 14 days ago. Bach Thanh Lua, principal of Thong Nhat A High School, which saw hundreds of students get back to school this morning, said that virtual learning did not work better than in-person instruction. Prolonged online learning will affect students, mainly 12th graders, who will take high-school graduation and university entrance exams. Earlier, the province allowed 17 schools to reopen, but some had to put their plans on hold to ensure the safety of students and teachers due to a surge in new infections. On November 21, the provincial government sent an urgent dispatch asking the Thong Nhat Middle School in Bien Hoa City, the only one in the city selected to pilot the reopening, to pause its reopening plan as nine students were infected with Covid.