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A high school in Sejong City prepares to reopen its campus for classes by installing transparent barriers on desks on May 1. (Yonhap News)

From now on, South Korean students will have to wear masks whenever they’re at school. They won’t have a desk buddy to sit with, and they won’t be allowed to chit-chat over lunch. As schools reopen after a hiatus of 72 days, their first priority will be disease control measures aimed at keeping students at a proper distance from each other to prevent the coronavirus from spreading again.

These were some of the disease control guidelines that were included in the Ministry of Education (MOE)’s back-to-school announcement on May 4. Students will be required to wear masks not only during their classes but also during recess. Desks will be spread out as much as possible to maintain distance between students. This means that students will sit in single rows, without their typical desk mates, and that group activities are out of the question. Students won’t be allowed to wander from one classroom to another except when they’re going to the bathroom, the cafeteria, or the water fountain. At elementary schools in particular, each class might be sent to recess at a different time.

Cafeterias will look quite different as well. Grades and classes will have staggered lunch times, and cafeteria seats will be arranged in a zig-zag pattern, with temporary dividers set up to minimize contact between students. While waiting in line, students will have to stay an arm span away from the person in front of them, and they won’t be allowed to talk during meals. The Ministry of Education will allow some schools, depending on their circumstances, to provide simple meals or ask students to bring their own lunches. Disposable plates and utensils will also be allowed on a temporary basis.

Some school subjects will only be held on a limited basis even after schools reopen. Physical education teachers will have to focus on physical activities that involve minimal contact, rather than activities in which students are likely to release more droplets. In music classes, students will also not be allowed to sing in choirs or playing wind instruments for now.

What happens when students have suspicious symptoms or test positive?

If a student presents suspicious symptoms, such as a fever, before going to class or the cafeteria, they’ll be moved to the “temporary observation room,” under the supervision of the school nurse, and then sent to a clinic for an appointment or a screening center for a test.

If even a single student tests positive for COVID-19 at a school, all the students and teaching staff there will be placed under self-quarantine for 14 days, and in-person classes will be replaced with online ones. That’s more stringent than the original guideline, which only said that, in the event of a positive case, all classes at the school may be suspended for 14 days if necessary.

“When an adult tests positive, it’s easy to track their movements through security camera footage and credit card records, but it isn’t easy to track the movement of students inside a school,” explained an official from the MOE. But depending on the outcome of the epidemiological study, in-person classes at the school could resume before the 14 days are over.

In addition to this, the MOE has accepted the recommendation of disease control experts to add the categories of diarrhea, nausea, and loss of taste and smell to the symptoms (currently, fever and labored breathing) on the health survey that students complete at home, using the National Education Information System (NEIS), before going to school. Students and education workers who live with someone in self-quarantine will have to remain home for 14 days.

The MOE has also decided to address the question of whether air conditioning can be used in classrooms — quite a hot topic, as the weather gets warmer — in the new guidelines, which will be released soon, following consultation with the public health authorities and experts. The current guidelines allow teachers to regularly open the windows to ventilate classrooms but ban air purifiers and other devices that would circulate air in the building.

The public health authorities suggest that more meticulous precautions should be taken for the potential occurrence of infection clusters.

“We don’t think it’s likely that clusters of cases will occur at school after students return to class, but it’s possible,” said Jung Eun-kyeong, director of Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), during the briefing on Monday. Jung noted that students in the lower grades of elementary school present a greater risk of not obeying the distancing and hygiene rules than older students. In fact, some parents are worried about the fact that children in those lower grades will be returning to school so soon.

“Whether they’re in the lower grades or the upper grades, elementary school students are going to have a lot of trouble abiding by the personal hygiene rules. We need to reduce the number of times that students go to school as much as possible. Remote classes should be continued so that students only attend school once or twice a week,” recommended Ki Mo-ran, a professor of preventive medicine at the National Cancer Center.

In a related story, the National United Achievement Test (NUAT) for students in their third year of high school, which had been scheduled for May 12, has been delayed two days until May 14. On Apr. 24, high school students around the country took the achievement test, without being graded, at their homes.

By Lee Yu-jin and Choi Won-hyung, staff reporters

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