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It also asked students to avoid mingling with people infected with the virus, cover mouth and nose with a bent elbow or tissue paper while coughing or sneezing.
Meanwhile, many guardians have stopped sending their children to the schools while authorities of many schools instructed guardians to keep their children at home if they feel feverish or were suffering from a cough or cold.
While talking to The Daily Star, many guardians have requested the government to shut the schools as a precautionary measure to prevent the virus spread.
Guardians of the students at Dhanmondi’s Nalonda High School said the school authorities at a Facebook group urged them to keep their children at home if he or she was having fever, cough and any kind of respiratory problems.
Authorities of William Carey International School Bangladesh of West Rajabazar issued similar directives to the guardians.
A guardian of a student at Birshreshtha Munshi Abdur Rouf Public College said he was not sending his two children to the school after learning that there are coronavirus patients in Bangladesh.
Rokshana Yesmin Tithi, a guardian of a student at Saint Francis Xavier’s Girls’ School & College in Old Dhaka, said the government should close all schools for 15 days.
“The government of Jammu and Kashmir has shut down all primary schools as two confirmed coronavirus cases were reported. Dhaka is more densely populated than Jammu,” she said.
Opposition BNP also demanded that all the schools be shut down for two weeks.
“We think all school-college, educational institutions should be shut down immediately at least for two weeks. Next steps can be taken after observing the situation,” BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said yesterday while addressing a press conference at the party’s Nayapaltan headquarters.
Meerjady Sabrina Flora, director at the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, however, said, “No such situation has arisen yet that we have to close down schools and colleges. But everyone should avoid mass gatherings.”
Education Minister Dipu Moni on Monday said that government would decide on closure of schools after consulting with specialists.
Several Indian states have closed down all schools as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of the virus.
Unesco said as of March 9, 29 countries in three continents have announced or implemented school closures. Fifteen countries have shut schools nationwide, impacting almost 305 million children and youths.
The countries are Azerbaijan, Bahrain, China, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
PREVIOUS STAR NEWS CIRCULATED ON SOCIAL MEDIA
A screenshot of a report published on The Daily Star in 2018 was circulated on social media yesterday, claiming that the government instructed schools and colleges to stay closed.
The story, titled “Schools, colleges shut tomorrow: Ministry” was published on August 1, 2018, as part of the daily’s reporting on the road safety movement at the time.
Mohammad Abul Khair, public relations officer at the Education Ministry, confirmed last evening that the ministry had not taken any such decision.
“A quarter with vested interest are circulating these rumours,” he said, adding that people are being requested not to believe such rumours.

Eight killed in attack on army post in Niger
Afp, Niamey
An attack by Boko Haram jihadists on an army post in the southeastern Niger region of Diffa left eight dead and three missing, state radio said Monday.
Local sources had said Sunday that a “major” attack had killed soldiers who were hospitalised in Diffa, but they did not give figures.
Chetima Wangou came under attack by Boko Haram by around 20 heavily armed vehicles, the radio report said.
“On the friends’ side there were eight dead, eight wounded, three missing. On the enemy side almost all the assailants were neutralised,” the radio said.
It said there were three successive clashes and that vehicles that had managed to cross the border into Nigeria were “almost all neutralised” by air strikes by a joint multinational force of Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon.
The region which abuts Nigeria and Chad has repeatedly suffered attacks by the Boko Haram jihadist group since 2015, but they have subsided since late last year.
The new attack was partially enabled by a lower water level on the Komadougou River marking the border between Niger and Nigeria, a humanitarian source told AFP.
In February last year, seven Nigerian soldiers were killed in an attack in the same village of Chetima Wangou.
Located in the Lake Chad basin in the middle of the Sahel, the Diffa region is home to 120,000 refugees from Nigeria fleeing the Boko Haram violence, as well as 110,000 people internally displaced within Niger, according to UN data released in October.