Educators move to protect key exams

Dongcheng district in Beijing is requiring all graduating students in junior and senior high school to have a coronavirus test before they can sit down in their classrooms or take the gaokao (college entrance exam) or zhongkao (high school entrance exam).

Both the gaokao and the zhongkao are important examinations for Chinese high school graduate students. And both are scheduled to take place next month.

Zhou Yuling, director of Dongcheng district Education Commission, ordered schools in the district to organize online education courses to guarantee that the tests go smoothly.

Meanwhile schools are being urged to further strengthen health management practices by teachers and students and strengthen disinfection procedures to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19 on campus, Zhou said in a television and telephone conference on prevention and control of the coronavirus on Wednesday.

Liu Zao, Party secretary of the Dongcheng district Education Commission, said anyone with a fever or other symptoms of infection must report to the authorities in a timely manner.

Liu urged high school graduates to try to refrain from going outdoors to prevent picking up the coronavirus.

In Beijing's Xicheng district, testing of 668 throat swabs collected from local teachers, students and parents came up negative on Tuesday. Forty other samples collected from off campus were also negative.

The tests were organized after an earlier test of a sixth-grade student from a primary school on Xiangchang Road in Xicheng district came back positive. The student lives in the city's Fengtai district.