University students in England to have staggered returns after Christmas

Source: Xinhua| 2020-12-03 23:29:02|Editor: huaxia

LONDON, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- To minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission, university students in England will have staggered starting dates for returning to campus after Christmas, the British government said Thursday.

According to the government, students would stagger their journeys back to campus over a five-week period beginning on Jan. 4, 2021, with everyone expected to be back at university by Feb. 7 next year.

Students will be offered two lateral-flow COVID-19 tests when they arrive back at school, said the government in a new guidance.

The first students returning will be for courses which are difficult to teach solely online, including medicine, nursing and dentistry, sciences which need to use laboratories, and music, dance, drama, said the guidance, calling on students to travel back by private transport where possible and avoid car sharing.

The announcement came as a seven-day window -- allowing students to leave university and head home for Christmas -- started Thursday (till Wednesday next week). The wholesale evacuation of university campuses will be accompanied by a mass testing program, trying to ensure that returning students do not spread coronavirus around the country.

In England, about 1.2 million students will be travelling from a university to a home address in another part of the country, reported the BBC.

England came out of its second national COVID-19 lockdown on Wednesday, but life is still far from normal as the new "tougher" tiers system of coronavirus restrictions kicked in.

To bring life back to normal, countries including Germany, China, Russia, and the United States are racing against time to find a vaccine. Enditem

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