55 Thanjavur school girls test Covid positive

THANJAVUR: Fifty-five students and one teacher of a government-aided girls school at Ammapettai in Thanjavur district have been admitted to government hospitals in Thanjavur and Tiruvarur after testing positive for Covid-19 over the past two days.
The district administration has declared two-week holiday for Regina Caeli Girl’s Higher Secondary School which has more than 1,200 students on its rolls.Around 600 students of Classes IX to XII have been attending classes at the school since Pongal in January. A few days ago, a student of class XII reported fever. When tested, it came to light that she had contracted the coronavirus. Subsequently, the school authorities arranged for a swab test for all the 460 class XII students on March 11. As 20 of them tested positive on March 12, they were admitted to the government medical college hospitals in Thanjavur and Tiruvarur.
On being alerted by the district administration, a team of health workers camped at the school and conducted swab test on the remaining students. When the results came on Sunday, 35 more students and a teacher were found to have tested positive. All of them have been admitted to the two hospitals for further treatment. While health workers have started screening the remaining students as well as villagers in Ammapettai, district collector M Govinda Rao has directed health officials to set up a monitoring committee and submit a report on the spread of the virus.
The collector visited the school and around 24 villages in and around Ammapettai and checked the precautionary measures being taken. Officials said the contact history of the 55 students and teacher has been traced by health workers while a special medical desk has been working round the clock in Ammapettai. The collector also instructed district educational department officials to check whether standard operating procedures have been properly implemented at all the 436 schools in the district.