After a year, Iraq students back in school as pandemic slows

By ABDULRAHMAN ZEYAD
Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi students have returned to classrooms for the first time in a year, following the prolonged closure caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Iraq’s Health Ministry has mandated health safety protocols that include obligatory vaccination or weekly PCR tests for teachers, social distancing among students and face masks. But notorious overcrowding in Iraq’s public schools poses a problem. In one school in an impoverished suburb of Baghdad, some students could not stay and had to return home on Monday because there was not enough room in classrooms with the maintaining of proper social distancing regulations.