Pandemic ways of kicking off a new school year in Vietnam

Since Da Nang City became the most recent Covid-19 epicenter, it refrained from holding a new school year opening ceremony.
Instead, the city's Department of Education and Training cooperated with Da Nang Radio and Television Station to broadcast a new school year ceremony at 7 a.m.
More than 10 teachers at Nui Thanh Primary School in Da Nang's Hai Chau District (pictured) watch the seminar on TV.

Bui Xuan Phuc, a first grade student at Nui Thanh Primary School, asked his parents to bring him to school.
Bui Hong Quan, the father, said his son was sad since he could not meet his friends on the opening day of the new school year, but added he supports the city's preventive measures.

Tran Thi Huong in Da Nang teaches her first-grade daughter, Trinh Tran Nguyen An, to practice reading at home since there was no opening ceremony.
"I want to give her the feeling of attending class on the first day of school," said Huong, who is a teacher.

Quang Nam Province, which borders Da Nang, held a scaled-down ceremony.
In the picture, a group of student representatives at Nguyen Van Troi Primary School wear name tags and uniforms to attend the opening ceremony. They stand two meters apart on colored square marks before entering the school.

Students take turns to be disinfected and have their temperatures screened by a teacher before attending the opening ceremony.
For the 2020-2021 school year, Quang Nam has more than 131,600 students entering elementary schools. But only first graders attended the opening ceremony in full, the remaining grades sent two to five students to represent their classes.

Also in Quang Nam, 300 students of Nguyen Binh Khiem High School for the Gifted attended the 45-minute opening ceremony. Students wore face masks and sat at a minimum distance of 1.5 m apart.

The Hanoi Department of Education and Training instructed schools not have many people attending the ceremony.
The city's Marie Curie School decided to let nearly 400 6th graders, the school's youngest students, to represent the entire school at the opening ceremony, while the remaining 3,600 students attended the ceremony online via a projector screen.

Students of a class at Marie Curie attend the flag raising ceremony through a projector.

The ceremony concluded with a performance from teachers and students holding hands to join forces in the battle against Covid-19.

At Nguyen Du High School in HCMC's District 10, the ceremony took place with the participation of 840 out of 1,500 students from 10th to 12th grades. All students and teachers wore masks provided by the school.
Principal Huynh Thanh Phu said: "There were one to 10 students representing each class in grades 11th and 12th to minimize big crowds."
Vietnam welcomed nearly 23 million students from kindergarten through to high school for the 2020-2021 school year.