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China should avoid any stop-start reopening of schools and colleges and be vigilant as the coronavirus situation eases, leading epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan told education officials.
Speaking during an online panel discussion, Zhong and other top communicable disease experts said it should be safe for students to go back to the classroom as there was a significantly lower risk of local transmission in China, though there was still a risk as it continued to spread rapidly elsewhere.
The discussion, organised by the Ministry of Education, took place on Monday but official media reported the details on Wednesday.
“China has already tamed the effective reproduction number [of the virus] to 0.2 or 0.3 – that’s very low and unlikely to cause a massive outbreak,” Zhong said. “But it’s impossible to expect that China will have no infections, and I staunchly support [the idea] that we should move on.”
Epidemiologists usually consider a reproduction number below 1 as an indicator that an outbreak could fade out. Some experts put the number in China at a range between 2.2 and 5.7 when the first cases were reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, in December.
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