Schools of more than 90 percent of the world’s students closed during this pandemic. This graphic shows how fast it happened. - The Washington Post

Schools of more than 90 percent of the world’s students closed during this pandemic. This graphic shows how fast it happened. - The Washington Post

Schools of more than 90 percent of the world’s students closed during this pandemic. This graphic shows how fast it happened.

The schools of more than 90 percent of the world’s enrolled students have closed because of the coronavirus pandemic — and it happened over the space of only a few weeks, a United Nations agency said.

Schools in 188 countries had shuttered by March 4, affecting 91.3 percent of students from the earliest years through college and vocational school, the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, reported.

The total number of students affected was 1,576,021,818 — and it is girls who will suffer the most from the closures, the agency known as UNESCO said.

On Feb. 16, only 0.1 percent of the world’s students had been affected, amounting to a little more than 1 million, with China the only country that had shut down schools nationwide. As the novel coronavirus spread from country to country, continent to continent, governments quickly began to take action, ordering nationwide shutdowns of schools and most other aspects of public life.

The Washington Post reported that more than 1.2 million cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed worldwide, although the number could be significantly higher because of the lack of adequate testing in many countries. The United States has the most reported cases, with at least 333,000 people testing positive for the virus, and 9,516 have died in the country.

According to UNESCO, girls will suffer the most from school closure around the world.

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What countries are doing to keep kids learning during pandemic

Stefania Giannini, UNESCO’s assistant director general for education, and Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, chief executive for Plan International, a development and humanitarian organization, wrote that of the students out of school, more than 111 million of them are girls living in the world’s least developed CONTINUE READING: Schools of more than 90 percent of the world’s students closed during this pandemic. This graphic shows how fast it happened. - The Washington Post