Puducherry shuts schools, colleges till Jan 31 amid COVID-19 spike

Schools and colleges in Puducherry will remain closed until January 31 due to a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases, the Puducherry government announced on Tuesday, January 18. The announcement was made by the Union territory’s Education Minister, A Namassivayam. The minister also said that online classes for the students will be conducted. Earlier, the Puducherry government had allowed schools to reopen from December 4. However, on January 9, the government ordered that offline classes for students of Classes 1 to 9 be suspended until “further orders”.

Meanwhile, Puducherry witnessed an increase in the number of daily COVID-19 cases during the last 24 hours ending 10 am on Tuesday, as 2,093 fresh infections were reported. With this, the total number of infections has reached 1,40,710 in the Union territory.

The new cases were identified after 6,028 samples were collected. Puducherry region alone accounted for 1,715 new cases out of the 2,093, while Karaikal had 279 cases, followed by Mahe (45) and Yanam (54). Additionally, three more people succumbed to the coronavirus infection in the last 24 hours, raising the overall death toll to 1,893.

As of Tuesday, the number of active cases stood at 10,393, out of which 163 patients have been hospitalised and the remaining 10,230 patients are in home isolation, Director of Health and Family Welfare Services G Sriramulu said. He said 256 patients recovered and were discharged during the last 24 hours, as the overall recoveries reached 1,28,424.

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He also said the Test Positivity Rate in Puducherry was 35.72%, while fatality and recovery rates were 1.35% and 91.27% respectively. He added that 15,03,355 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered so far and they comprised 9,09,544 first doses, 5,90,824 second and 2,987 precautionary doses.

(With PTI inputs)