Groehling Confirms 17 Schools Fully Closed in Slovakia

Bratislava, September 21 (TASR) – Seventeen schools in Slovakia have been fully closed due to coronavirus as of Monday, Education Minister Branislav Groehling (Freedom and Solidarity/SaS) told TASR on the same day, adding it’s a moderate increase from Friday (September 18) when their number was 13.

“A total of 224 classes have been closed and we have 8,100 pupils at home at the moment,” said the minister. He confirmed that figures usually slightly grow over a weekend to subsequently go down during the following week. “It’s partly caused by the fact that a lot of cases are reported on Friday,” explained Groehling.

Groehling noted that still only roughly 1 percent of pupils are in home isolation, which he views positively. “I will inform my colleagues from the pandemic commission so that they regard these figures when setting new measures to take effect as of October,” he said. He stated that this school year will be dynamic. “It will happen that one month we’ll be at school, then a week or two at home, we’ll have to get used to it. We will adjust the entire content of education based on that,” said the minister.

The Education Ministry initiated a mechanism allowing up-to-date information on what’s happening in the school sector to be available every day. This is the COVID platform – the so-called school traffic lights for acquiring information from school headmasters and school facilities on the development of the epidemiological situation.