Rigorous COVID-19 Prevention for China's College Entrance Exam

A graduating student attends a class at Jiangsu Qingjiang Middle School in Huaian, East China's Jiangsu Province, on March 30, 2020. [Xinhua]

BEIJING, July 2 (Xinhua) — China has put in place the most rigorous COVID-19 prevention and control measures for next week's national college entrance exam, a key event for which more than 10 million candidates have registered, the Ministry of Education said on Thursday.

Candidates and test site staff will have their body temperatures and health conditions monitored regularly, starting 14 days ahead of the exam, the ministry said in a statement.

Exam-sitters will have their body temperatures measured, and are allowed into test sites only when their body temperature is below 37.3 degrees Celsius.

There will be at least three isolated test rooms at each test site, available for candidates who exhibit symptoms of fever and coughs during the exam, according to the statement.

Around 10.71 million candidates registered for this year's exam, up by 400,000 from a year earlier, it said.

This year's national unified college entrance exam is scheduled from July 7 to 8, one month later than usual, because of the COVID-19 epidemic.

Apart from the whole-process COVID-19 containment measures, wide-ranging efforts are being made by local authorities to create a comfortable environment for exam-sitters, including traffic management, noise control, and cooling methods at test sites.

In regions where heavy rainfall, floods, and even typhoons could happen during the upcoming exam days, governments have developed detailed disaster emergency response protocols.

The ministry vowed zero tolerance of college admission irregularities, saying students found to have been involved in exam cheating, and admission fraud, will see their admissions revoked, and be seriously dealt with.

(Source: Xinhua)