Children from the fifth grade upwards will return to remote learning from this Thursday until the end of February, as Poland seeks to contain a surge in the Omicron variant that has led to record numbers of coronavirus infections.
The new measures were announced today by the education minister, Przemysław Czarnek. He has regularly emphasised his desire to keep schools open, but said that the decision to close them again “had to be made [after] listening to the views of the sanitary services and analysing yesterday and today’s data”.
On Friday, Poland reported its highest number of new COVID-19 cases, 36,665, since the start of the pandemic. That record was broken against the following day, with 40,876 cases. The daily figures have remained above 29,000 since then, with Omicron now accounting for around 45% of infections.
The youngest four grades – that is, children up to 11 years old – will remain in school. Preschools and nurseries will continue to function as normal, as will special education schools, vocational schools and boarding houses.
The shift to remote classes coincides with winter school holidays, which in Poland last for two weeks but occur at different times in each of the country’s sixteen provinces.
Some children’s holidays started in mid-January and will end this Friday, but others will not begin until mid-February and then last until the end of that month.
Free Covid tests will be offered in pharmacies from next week and quarantine is to be cut from 10 days to 7, the government has announced after Poland today recorded its highest ever number of new infections https://t.co/mavfcKcSHp
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 21, 2022
Many schools are already operating in remote or hybrid (a mix of remote and in-person) mode due to the large number of infections and quarantines. As of this morning, almost 950,000 people in Poland (2.5% of the population) are in quarantine, the highest ever figure.
The education ministry today noted that almost 30% of all primary schools (in provinces not currently on holiday) are currently working in remote or hybrid mode, while for secondary schools the figure is 21%.
Last week, the health minister, Adam Niedzielski, had indicated that a decision to close schools would only be made after the holidays. However, yesterday he warned that the decision could be made much sooner, and this morning Czarnek said it would happen “within hours”.
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Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
