The Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is still spreading globally. As of April 7, 2020, it has reached 184 countries and territories, infecting more than 1.4 million people worldwide with more than 82,000 deaths.1 The situation in China has improved significantly since December 31, 2019.2 Owing to the unprecedented and effective quarantine measures taken across the country, Chinese health authorities reported on March 18, 2020, that for the first time since the outbreak no new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases had been reported, marking a major turning point in the fight against the highly contagious coronavirus.3 Since then, the daily number of new cases in the mainland of China has dropped to double digits, with new infections primarily originating from incoming air passengers from outside China.4 With the easing of the COVID-19 public health emergency in China, many of the stringent measures implemented during the crisis are gradually being relaxed, and the country is cautiously and methodically preparing to begin a post-pandemic return to normality. As part of the effort to restore societal activities suspended due to the virus outbreak, hundreds of thousands of primary, secondary, and high schools across the country, closed in January in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19, have begun to reopen and resume their regular academic and physical education curricula, especially in low-risk regions (i.e., in communities free of the disease). Months of closures and community-wide lockdowns have inevitably disrupted the routine physical activities of tens of millions of students in China. Therefore, as schools begin to come back into service, there is a public health need5,6 to ensure that all Chinese children and youth effectively move past the imposed restrictions that limited exercise by participating in the recommended levels of physical activity during the school day, including the time they spend being active in physical education classes. In addition, resuming regular physical activities may also help students recuperate from the stress and anxiety they experienced while in quarantine during the COVID-19 crisis.
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