Ludhiana: A day after five teachers of Government Senior Secondary School, Sekhewal, tested positive for Covid-19, the health department on Monday did sampling of as many as 250 students of the school.
Health department officials said out of the 51 teachers at the school, five had tested positive for the virus. Samples of another 350 students will be collected over the next two days.
The number of teachers of various government schools of the district testing positive in little over four weeks is 35, while one teacher of Government Senior Secondary School, Ghalib Kalan succumbed to the infection. In the same school, 27 students were tested positive after some teachers contracted the virus.
Confirming that more teachers have tested positive, district epidemiologist Dr Ramesh Bhagat said the five teachers testing positive on Sunday night are from Government Senior Secondary School, Sekhewal. All of them are females and asymptomatic, and they are being home-quarantined.
Health department officials said as per the standard operating procedure (SOP), contact tracing of the infected teachers is in progress and samples of all the teachers of the school are being collected. Samples of students are also being collected for testing.
The officials further said after the sampling, the school could be closed for a few days for sanitising the infrastructure. On Saturday, sample of a 39-year-old male teacher of Government High School, Bhundari was also declared positive, while the previous day, sample of a 46-year-old female teacher of Government Primary School on Barota Road was found to be positive, they said.
A health department officer revealed that they had sought a meeting with the district education officer (DEO) to work out a micro-plan to check the spread of disease in the schools, but the meeting was postponed. He said they have the list of teachers of government schools and their sampling would be done to identify and isolate the positive cases to check the spread of the disease.