LAHORE: The Punjab government on Tuesday established the National Command and Operational Centre to monitor implementation of coronavirus standard operating procedures (SOPs) at schools.

The central portal was established to get SOPs implementation reports from every school in the province daily. A login profile of every school has been set up on the portal where the head of every school will have to submit a report at 11am daily.

All the district education officers (secondary) have been made focal persons at the district level. The online training of all focal persons will be held on Oct 28 (today).

Meanwhile, the school education department was also working to shut down schools due to increased smog in the province.

The government also established a technical sub-working group to control coronavirus and measures to fight smog. The group suggested that markets should be closed at 7pm and marriage halls at 9pm in all cities of the province.

Meanwhile, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) issued a statement regarding the closure of universities. There were rumours on social media that universities were being closed due to an increase in coronavirus cases.

The HEC said there were no directions from the government about the closure of educational institutes that were fully implementing the SOPs. It further stated that students should not pay heed to rumours, and the commission was carefully monitoring the Covid-19 situation.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2020