Two more clusters of COVID-19 cases were detected among school students in Telangana, officials said on Friday. This includes 22 boarding students and two others at a government ST boys hostel in Hyderabad and 17 girl students from a social welfare residential school at Jagtial town.
As many as 92 boarding students and staff were tested for COVID-19 at the boys hostel in Hyderabad. Out of that, 22 students, besides two staff members, were found to have contracted the infection, an official press release said.
All the boarding students and staff members were asymptomatic and kept in quarantine, the release said. The remaining boarding students who tested negative were sent home by arranging transportation, it said. Arrangements were made for providing medical as well as healthy food facility for those quarantined, it said.
Similarly, as many as 17 girl students from a government social welfare residential school in Jagtial town tested positive for COVID-19, a health official said. A total of 31 girl students from 8th to 10th standards in the school reported cough and fever on Friday, the government official said.
They were immediately sent for COVID-19 test and 17 out of the 31 tested positive, he said.
Earlier, a girls school at Mancherial and a residential school at Kamareddy town in the state saw a large number of cases being reported.
An increase in COVID-19 cases has been noticed in Telangana. On Saturday, the state had recorded 364 cases and two deaths. With a uptick in COVID-19 cases, the Director of Public Health has reportedly issued directions to the health officials to increase RT-PCR testing.
“Earlier asymptomatic caseloads were about 60-70%. But now it has gone up to 90% posing a threat to those who are vulnerable as asymptomatic people can be super spreaders,” Dr G Srinivasa Rao, Director of Public Health was quoted as saying by Times of India. The health department has reportedly directed district officials to set up RT-PCR testing centres and conduct 4,000 tests daily.
Barring Hyderabad, only a few districts like Siddipet, Mahabubnagar and Nalgonda, have RT-PCR centres, as per the medical bulletin.
According to the bulletin, Telangana has recorded a total of 3,02,724 cases so far, out of which 2,11,907 (70%) of them are asymptomatic.
PTI inputs