Fresh Covid cases in Sivasagar schools ring alarm bells – Times of India

Detection of Covid cases in Sivasagar schools has been more worrying than the schools in Guwahati, sources in the education department said. Since Thursday, around 40 school students have been found Covid positive in the district where the daily rate of infection is far below capital Guwahati.

On Monday, in Barpatra Dol Uccha Vidyalay in Sivasagar, 15 students were found Covid positive. In another school, one student tested positive the same day. With this, students and teachers have got Covid infection in four schools in Sivasagar in the last five days.
Sivasagar deputy commissioner Megha Nidhi Dahal, however, told TOI that detection of new cases is revealing the true picture of several pockets in the district. “Since students from different families come to one school, random testing will help us detect Covid cases in the areas where the schools are located. Considering the current situation, we are planning to conduct Covid tests on all teachers by this week,” said Dahal, who was hopeful of isolating positive cases in the schools before these spread infection in the community.

A few schools in Guwahati reported several positive cases this month, though no such reports have been received in the city in the last two days. In central Assam’s Nagaon district, Covid infection has been reported in a junior college recently, whereas in lower Assam too, a few schools remained vulnerable to virus infection.

Despite concerns among the guardians, senior government officials said there is no need to close down all schools in any district of the state. Principal secretary to the education department, B Kalyan Chakravarthy, is in touch with the DCs constantly monitoring the campus situation.

“There are about 75 lakh children in the educational institutions across Assam. The number of Covid cases is negligible compared to this huge enrollment. Most importantly, the Covid cases in schools that we found in the last few days are non-symptomatic,” Chakravarthy told TOI on Monday.

Covid positivity rate in Assam remains stable, below 1%, though over 200 cases are being reported daily. On Monday, total 253 positive cases were detected after carrying out 43,156 tests. The positivity rate was 0.59%. Kamrup (Metro) district had the highest 87 cases. Three Covid deaths were reported on Monday, whereas the recovery rate has improved to 98.50%.