Grade 11 and 12 high school students in Shanghai can return to school starting on June 6, and Grade 9 students can do so starting on June 13, the Shanghai Education Commission announced on Thursday.

College entrance exams and senior high school entrance exams in Shanghai have been postponed from June to July due to the COVID-19 local wave in the city, with the former now scheduled to take place from July 7 to 9 and the latter from July 11 to 12.

Yang Zhenfeng, deputy director of the commission, said that students' health and safety will be prioritized when offline classes resume. For example, thorough disinfection and cleaning will be carried out multiple times before students return to their campuses. Nucleic acid testing workers will be stationed at each school and epidemic prevention materials that can last at least a month will be stored at each school.

Authorities have required students to take an antigen test before going to school as well as a nucleic acid test before leaving school on a daily basis. Students will also need to have their body temperature measured twice a day at school.

"Grid management will be implemented on campuses. This means dividing different grades, classes, and school function areas into grids so as to minimize the risk of infection," said Yang.

He noted that students can also opt to live in school from Monday to Friday and go home on weekends. Offline classes, he added, are optional, and students can continue taking online classes and preparing for the exams at home.

Students in other grades at middle and primary schools will continue with online classes till the end of this semester. Schools can arrange for these students to return to school once before the end of the semester for purposes such as graduation ceremonies for Grade 5 pupils.

Shanghai registered 48 local COVID-19 confirmed cases and 290 asymptomatic infections on Wednesday. Thirty-one cases were previously asymptomatic. All infections were found within quarantine and lockdown populations.