1. Reopening of colleges  at the time when the COVID-19 infection rate is soaring high will pose grievous threat to students and their families' health. As most of the UG college students come from different parts of the country, interstate/intercity travels to attend college might increase the risk of exposure to infectious agent!!

Hostels are places where social distancing is impossible because of the confined rooms shared between huge number of students and sharing of toilets ,wash basins and dining halls. Sanitizing toilets and wash basins after every use in quite impractical. GOD forbid , even if a single student happens to get infected or comes out to be an asymptomatic carrier , we could not imagine the explosion of infection among hundreds and thousands of students staying in the hostel.

In case of day scholars ,the elderly people of the family with underlying comorbidities (like Hypertension , diabetes mellitus or COPD) might catch infection from the infected student (in case he/she gets affected during college hours) developing more severe complications  that will add to the increasing mortality rate of COVID-19 infection. People living in containment areas or places sealed due to home quarantine will find it difficult to attend classes and if they are exempted from the restrictions, movement of people in and out of infected zones with build up a new chain of infection.

Teaching faculties  of Medical/Paramedical colleges are at very high risk of being infected due to direct contact with COVID patients and can be a source of transmission to students (especially students with asthma or other respiratory diseases will develop severe form of illness)

Keeping in view the above issues , we , the parents of young college students , the future of nation, request the concerned authorities to kindly adopt alternate mode of teaching/learning like online/recorded classes on Television or cellular phones or different platforms like SWAYAM, google classroom , youtube etc till the number of COVID patients  decline reasonable enough to reach the declining phase of curve.

Yours sincerely ,

CONCERNED PARENTS OF INDIA

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