Ohio governor Mike DeWine, speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, has said that it would not surprise him if schools in his state did not reopen this academic year.

K-12 schools – students between kindergarten and 12th grade – across Ohio are closed for three weeks from Monday to stop the spread of the coronavirus, but asked if it was possible that Ohio schools could possibly remain closed for the rest of the academic year, Governor DeWine said: “Absolutely”.

Citing projections that the impact of the virus may not peak until the latter part of April or May, the governor said that they have informed superintendents that while they have closed schools for three weeks, the odds are that this will go on for much longer.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has said that school closures of between two and four weeks are unlikely to have much of an impact on mitigating the spread of coronavirus.

“It would not surprise me if schools did not reopen this year.”

More than 20 states and a large number of urban school districts have closed schools.

Health officials in Ohio have said there might be 100,000 undiagnosed cases of coronavirus in the state to date.