Hong Kong will resume face-to-face school classes from Sept 23 as the Asian financial hub’s authorities aim to wind back strict coronavirus restrictions, which kept around 900,000 students working at home for over four months.

Kevin Yeung, the city’s Secretary for Education, said the resumption would be phased with grades 1, 5 and 6 resuming for secondary schools, primary schools and upper kindergartens on Sept 23, while other grades would open on Sept 29.

According to Reuters, the city’s government had said at the start of August that face-to-face classes would be suspended indefinitely as the Chinese special administrative region battled to control a third wave of the coronavirus. The reversal in policy comes with new daily cases dropping substantially to single and low double digits from triple digits a few weeks earlier.