Schools in Control Area in Parts of Shuangjing Switch to Online

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On Monday, April 25, local authorities instructed all kindergartens, primary, and secondary schools in parts of the Shuangjing, Jinsong, and Panjiayuan areas to suspend classes with immediate effect. The news broke late in the afternoon after the school day had ended for some of the affected schools.

Affected schools include Beijing City International School (BCIS), which is located just north of the restricted area. School families have been told that online schooling will begin on Wednesday after teachers have had time to prepare following the late notice of the school closure.

Beijing has been on alert since 10 students at a local middle school in Panjiayuan tested positive for Covid-19 two days earlier, on April 23. City officials had suspended classes in that school for seven days following the discovery of the positive test results. Since this news, the city has increased mandatory nucleic acid testing at several schools, office buildings and residences from a weekly basis to every couple of days.

Yesterday the city moved to close off the neighborhoods in the areas surrounding the schools after discovering the virus had spread to students’ homes and at least one restaurant in the district.

Other international schools outside of the affected zone have not been asked to suspend classes, but many are preparing for a city-wide lockdown similar to what is being enforced in Shanghai.

A few grocery stores, mostly of the April Gourmet, Jenny Lou's and Jenny Wang's chains, around Beijing saw a mad rush of shoppers starting yesterday. Basic necessities such as milk, eggs, canned and frozen goods flew off the shelves. Other local grocery stores have not reported the same phenomenon. April Gourmet suspended grocery deliveries on Monday evening and delivery times of other grocery apps were somewhat delayed, according to some users. At the time of writing, the earliest delivery time available on expat-centric food and grocery delivery app JSS was two days later, on Wednesday.

Images: Pexels, Xinjinbao

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