Yet another cluster of COVID-19 cases has been detected in Telangana, with 43 people at a medical college in Karimnagar testing positive for the coronavirus. Karimnagar District Medical and Health Officer (DMHO) Dr Juveria told TNM that 33 students of the Chalmeda Anand Rao Institute of Medical Sciences have tested positive so far, while the remaining cases were among staff members associated with the college. This is the latest among multiple COVID-19 clusters to be detected in the state, after Mahindra University and a few government-run residential schools.
The medical students had participated in various events as part of annual day celebrations recently, a health official told PTI. The college has been temporarily closed and more students and staff members are being tested.
Earlier on Thursday, December 2, another cluster was found in a government residential school in Sangareddy, when 24 students at Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Backward Classes Welfare Residential school at Indresham tested positive. A few days earlier, in the same district, 48 students of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Telangana Backward Classes Welfare Residential school at Muthangi village had also tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Hyderabad campus of Mahindra University was also closed earlier in November after 25 students and five staff members tested positive for the coronavirus. Prior to that, around 29 students of a residential school and junior college for girls in Wyra town of Khammam district tested positive for the coronavirus.
On Sunday, December 5, Telangana recorded 156 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total official number of those affected by the disease in the state to 6,76,943. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) accounted for the most cases with 54, followed by Karimnagar 47 and Ranga Reddy 12. It said 25,693 samples were tested on Sunday, taking the cumulative number of samples examined till date to 2.87 crore. The samples tested per million population was 7,72,814.
Since December 1, as many as 1,270 international passengers arriving from "at-risk" countries were screened at the international airport in Hyderabad, and 13 of them were found positive for COVID-19 whose samples were sent for genome sequencing in view of Omicron variant threat, health officials said.
With PTI inputs