Romania’s education ministry said 108 schools have been closed and almost 3,600 classes have been suspended due to a surge in Covid-19 cases.
It wasn’t just virus cases disrupting classes in Romania. A lack of heating in the southwestern city of Timisoara meant thousands of kindergarten children and pupils were learning from home on Friday.
With some 31,700 new infections registered on Friday, Covid-19 took its toll on schools.
Some 30,000 pupils and 7,300 teaching staff currently have Covid-19, the ministry said.
That’s less than one percent of all kindergarten children and school students and 2.7% of teachers.
Bucharest, Cluj, Romania’s second biggest city, and Timis and Hunedoara counties in western Romania are the worst affected.
Timis has almost 2,000 pupils with Covid-19 and 450 teachers. Twenty-eight schools have reverted to online teaching due to the virus alone.
Timis county school inspector Cosmin Hogea said if the situation got worse all schools and kindergarten would go online.
On Friday, 22 schools in Timisoara closed as classrooms were too chilly, News.ro reported.
Currently, 20% of pupils in the city are learning remotely either due to the pandemic or heating problems, Hogea said.
“Parents are in a state of panic that it’s easy to catch the virus. If it’s chilly in the classrooms, children could catch a cold.”
„We’ve assessed the situation and if necessary, we’ll suspend classes in all the schools. We won’t air the classrooms in schools which are still open as it could be a factor in Covid-19 cases,” he said.
Timisoara heating company Colterm owes money to suppliers and is only providing a fraction of the heat it normally pumps into schools and hospitals. In some classrooms, the temperature is between 10C and 15C, so schools have closed.
