Primary school students wearing traditional costumes and ox-themed headpieces give a performance in class on their first day of the new semester in Shenyang, Liaoning Province in northeast China, on March 1 (XINHUA)

Kindergarten, primary and middle school students in the capital of China commenced their spring semester classes on March 1 with coronavirus prevention measures in place.

On the same day, Shijiazhuang City in Beijing's neighbor Hebei Province also saw the return to campus of some 1.45 million primary and middle school students. Kindergarten students are set to resume normal classes after March 8.

Hebei Province reported a new cluster of COVID-19 infections in January. As local communities found no new confirmed cases for more than two weeks, with all results coming back negative following district-wide rounds of nucleic acid screening, the area announced to no longer have any medium or high risk areas for the virus after Shijiazhuang downgraded its last medium risk district to the low risk level, an official said at a press conference on February 21.

Heilongjiang, another province in northeast China that reported clusters of new infections last winter, started the new semester on March 3.

Many schools offered their students an out-of-the-ordinary first class to start off the new semester in a rather more special way. For example, as China is gearing up to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Liaoning Province in northeast China encouraged its schools to enlighten their students with CPC history as first lessons of the new semester.

Other schools opted to present students with health safety classes to teach them how to protect their wellbeing and avoid exposure to the virus. Yang Yaqun, a 30-year-old teacher at a primary school in Changping District, Beijing, noted that teaching staff has been on high alert since last year, adding, "We ask all students to wash their hands frequently and maintain social distance to protect themselves."

A student uses hand sanitizer before entering school campus on the first day of the new semester at a primary school in Chongqing, southwest China, on March 1 (XINHUA)

Li Yi, spokesman for the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, recently said that all training institutions should resume normal classes after seeking approval from the authorities.

For the new spring semester, the Ministry of Education asserted China's ability to fully resume normal classes given the stability of its current COVID-19 epidemic situation.

Due to concerted effort on the part of both the country's education authorities and schools, there has been no on-campus cluster infection since the earliest stages of the epidemic and no new confirmed or suspected cases reported for students during the past Spring Festival holiday, Wang Dengfeng, an official with the ministry, said.

According to the semester calendar as outlined by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, colleges across Beijing will resume classes at some point in March. Several opened their doors again on February 19, others will follow.

Ma Qi, a 20-year-old college student in Shunyi District, was eager to go back to campus on March 20. As the area officially announced to have found a new cluster of infections on December 23, 2020, Ma had to stay at home for more than two months.

"My college decided to provide two-week online courses before allowing us to attend offline activities on campus," she told Beijing Review.

China has brought an end to previous rounds of domestically transmitted infections. This underlines the fact that the country has weathered the epidemic challenge brought on by the holiday travel rush, Wang Guangfa, a pulmonologist at Peking University First Hospital, told Global Times.

"The overall epidemic situation in China looks stable and the number of imported cases is also experiencing a downward trend," Wang said.

The reason why students can return to campus after their extended winter holiday without having to worry is that the public has gained a sense of confidence in the country and its proven capability to control the epidemic, he said.

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon

Comments to mamm@bjreview.com