Health ministry asks education minister to extend school holidays for another week

YEREVAN, January 21. / ARKA/. Armenia’s health ministry has again asked the ministry of education and science to prolong winter school holidays for another week. The ministry has already extended the holidays twice, for two weeks. According to a note, sent to the prime minister by the ministry of health, the daily monitoring of the situation with acute respiratory diseases and influenza shows that the situation is tending to stabilize.

In view of the fact that cutting the number of contacts among children is key to the prevention of the spread of infection, the ministry of health acting on an instruction of the prime minister asked the ministry of education, the ministry of territorial administration and emergency situations and the Yerevan municipality to extend winter holidays for secondary and vocational schools as well as  pre-school institutions for another week.

The deadly swine flu has caused 18 deaths in Armenia. According to the ministry of health, as of January 18 there were still 982 people with acute respiratory diseases in hospitals, while the number of children declined from 1,066 to 890, and out of 124 pregnant women 94 remained in hospitals. The ministry said that 7 patients with pneumonia were connected to respirators, ‘but the situation may change every day.’ -0-