Hong Kong Closes Schools for December as Covid-19 Surges

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Caixin’s coverage of the new coronavirus

What’s New: The Hong Kong government announced Sunday it would close most of its educational institutions until late December, after the city recorded the highest one-day rise in coronavirus infections.

The Education Bureau said that all kindergartens as well as primary and secondary schools will shut until Dec. 28. The semi-autonomous region logged a record 115 new Covid-19 cases Sunday, 109 of which were locally transmitted, according to the Center for Health Protection (CHP).

For the month of November, more than 26 schools in the city had already been subject to temporary closures following confirmed infection cases of students and teachers.

The bureau noted that different teaching methods would be adopted to ensure students would be able to continue to study at home during the shutdown, and for residential students’ dormitories to remain open to take care of the students’ needs.

The background: The latest announcement comes roughly a week after the Hong Kong government ordered several schools to close for 14 days due to a number of new cases.

The infections in Hong Kong are thought to be spreading through different cluster groups that have proven to be more severe than the “third wave” in August, Chuang Shuk Kwan, the CHP’s director of infectious disease, said at a press conference Sunday.

A cluster associated with a dance club is still the biggest infection group, with the number of cases associated with that cluster increasing by 62 on Sunday, taking its cumulative confirmed infection total to 479.

Quick Takes are condensed versions of China-related stories for fast news you can use.

Contact editor Marcus Ryder (marcusryder@caixin.com)