The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry has drawn up guidelines to prevent infections of the new coronavirus and notified boards of education nationwide of them on Tuesday. A 10-item checklist for school officials was also released.
The guidelines call for completely avoiding areas where three conditions exist at the same time: closed spaces with poor ventilation, crowds of people, and conversations at close-range. As specific measures, the guidelines cite the need to take temperatures every morning and check for cold symptoms, while wearing masks and carefully ventilating classrooms.
The three conditions should not overlap at entrance ceremonies, opening ceremonies and club activities. As for school lunches, the guidelines point out measures such as not having desks face each other so as not to spread respiratory droplets. The guidelines also called on schools to administer supplementary lessons and implement home study programs in response to lessons missed due to the closures. The ministry wants each school to use the 10-item checklist in line with the guidelines when it resumes.
Should a student or faculty member be found to be infected, the guidelines call for the government to determine the scale and duration of a temporary school closure by comprehensively taking into account the presence or absence of symptoms and the spread of infection in the local community.
"The situation has not improved since the temporary closing of schools," Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Minister Koichi Hagiuda said at a press conference after a Cabinet meeting. While he acknowledged that continued vigilance was essential, he reiterated his intention to have schools resume. "Public awareness of preventing the spread of infections is increasing," he said.
However, he added that "we'll have to consider asking schools to close again" in the case of an "overshoot," or an explosion of coronavirus cases in Japan.
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