Classroom contagions form new Covid-19 clusters in Telangana

HYDERABAD: As Covid-19 continues to infect children at schools, doctors said that up to 20 children were living in the same hall in the Keesara school which led to the rapid spread of the virus. Another alarm bell went off on Wednesday when the Principal of Zilla Parishad School in Nagole tested positive for the virus.

While it is learnt that the school was shut and all children were asked to isolated from home, the faculty were tested for the infection and all turned negative. The school has been closed for safety reasons. This is the fourth such case to be reported this week. Earlier, schools in Kamareddy and Mancherial also reported similar clusters. 

However, presently school authorities are themselves reaching out for help. “Till now we have not received any instructions from State government or district authorities to conduct tests for residential schools and colleges,” explained a health official.The main issue is lack of co-ordination between the health and education departments to identify these schools and send dedicated staff to tackle the problem, added another official.

According to the School Education Department, around 42 per cent of 17 lakh upper primary students have been attending classes after the schools reopened on February 24. Likewise, around 70 per cent of nine lakh Class IX and X students have been attending classes from February 1.     

Meanwhile, parents are urging the government to promote Class I to VIII students. “The decision of reopening schools was taken in haste. We all know that Covid-19 cases are subsiding but schools are now becoming new clusters. It’s time for the government to rethink its decision of opening the schools,” president of Indian Parents Association, Telangana, said. 

The silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud of despondency is that the overall risk of the Coronavirus among healthy children has so far been low. According to the Health Department, the test positivity rate among children aged up to 10 years is 4.15 per cent and for children-young adults between 10-20 years is 9.03 per cent. 

Children are generally more likely to have mild cases of Covid-19 than adults. But they are still capable of transmitting the virus to other people. Though rare, there have been severe and fatal cases among children in Telangana.

108-yr-old woman takes Covid shot at Koti Hosp
Keeping at bay all notions of vaccine reluctance, a 108-year-old woman from Hyderabad, G Venkatamma took the Covid-19 shot on Wednesday. Both the woman and her son, aged above 60, took the shot and did not report any adverse reactions. “She had no complaints post vaccination and expressed happiness with the process,” said Dr Manish Gupta, Association Professor at ENT Hospital.

Mancherial sees more cases than GHMC
Reporting its highest single-day caseload in the last one month on Wednesday, Telangana saw 247 new cases of Covid-19. Districts that had been reporting few cases until the last week saw a nearly tenfold rise in cases on Tuesday. For instance, Mancherial, which had reported less than 10 cases per day last week, reported 45 cases on Tuesday and had the highest caseload on Wednesday across the State, leaving behind GHMC limits as well.