All schools, colleges, and other educational institutions in the national capital have been allowed to reopen in a phased manner from the coming Monday. Gyms, swimming pools and spas will also be permitted to function again with effect from next week but with some restrictions. Private sector offices can now remain open with 100 percent attendance.

These and some other decisions were taken here on Friday by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) at its meeting chaired by Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal after seeking experts’ advice and closely looking at the drastic improvement in the Covid-19 situation for a few days.

It was decided that schools would reopen for students in classes 9 to 12 from 7 February and for nursery to class 8 from 14 February.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said after the DDMA meeting that while hybrid classes would continue to be held, colleges would be discouraged to have online classes. They would be asked to hold offline classes on a regular basis. But unvaccinated teachers will not be allowed to take classes in the physical mode.

The night curfew will continue to remain in force, but it will now begin at 11 pm, instead of 10 pm, and end at 5  am till further orders.

The DDMA meeting decided that a person driving a car alone would be exempt from wearing a face mask. Restaurants were also provided relief as these eating places can now remain open till 11 pm.

These decisions were taken with the daily number of Covid-19 cases having come down to less than 3,000 and the positivity rate has dipped to a little over 4 per cent. As against this, during the current wave of the pandemic, the single-day number of coronavirus cases in Delhi had touched a record of 28,867 cases on 13 January and the positivity rate having gone up to 30.6 percent on 14 January.

The DDMA had withdrawn the weekend curfew last week in view of the situation getting better gradually. Today’s meeting was scheduled for discussing further easing of the restrictions with reopening of schools and gyms and ending of the night curfew being on top of the agenda. There was a green signal for the reopening of schools and other educational institutions from the Central ministries of health and education also.