Several private and international schools have shortened their school days in response to growing concerns over the MERS coronavirus spreading among students, parents and school administrators, it was reported.
According to a report by the Arab News daily, primary students have been finishing school two hours early at noon instead of 2pm.
An unnamed supervisor of one of the international schools in the Rawdah district in Jeddah said that reducing the number of school hours for some classes, particularly for years one to three, was usually done for a week before the end of the school year.
However, school days would now be cut short for up to four weeks amid fears of the spread of MERS, which infected another seven people on Tuesday, bringing the total number of cases to 421 since September 2012.
The newspaper reported that the seven new MERS cases included five women.
Four patients were diagnosed and being treated in Riyadh, two in Jeddah and one in Madinah, the Health Ministry reportedly said.
Meanwhile, a man has died in Jordan after being infected with the MERS virus, a media report said, in what is that country’s second fatality from the disease this year and the fourth since 2012.
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