19 Students Covid-Positive In Maharashtra School, 450 Being Tested

19 children have tested positive for Covid in a school in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar, said the district collector today, marking yet another school in the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya network finding itself in the midst of a Covid outbreak.

450 students studying at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya -- a residential CBSE-affiliated school in the district's Takli Dhokeshwar village -- had their samples sent for testing, of which 19 have come back positive. Analysis of all 450 samples is still underway, said the district collector Rajendra Bhosale.

The students who tested positive for coronavirus have been isolated and are currently quarantined at Parner's Rural Hospital, where they are being treated.

The district is also tracing all close and distant contacts of the students, with 100 per cent RT-PCR testing of all contacts presently underway, added the collector.

The positive cases in the Maharashtra school come at a time when the country is trying to contain the spread of the Omicron variant, even as school students returning to in-person education are increasingly testing positive in large numbers.

In December alone, multiple schools across the country were susceptible to coronavirus outbreaks, particularly ones in the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya network of institutions. Just this past week, 29 students tested positive for Covid at a Bengal branch of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, while, a few days prior, 18 students were found Covid positive at a school in Maharasthra's Navi Mumbai.

Not long before that, 10 students and a teacher tested positive for COVID-19 at a school in Karnataka, at around the same time that another Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya branch in Karnataka saw 59 Covid-positive students and 10 infected staff members in early December.