Karnataka School Sealed As Teacher, 10 Students Test Covid +ve

At least 10 students and a teacher tested positive for COVID-19 at a school in Karnataka's Chikkamagaluru district following which the school building was sealed and declared a containment zone.

District health officer of Chikkamagaluru Dr Umesh said a total of 470 people, including students, teachers and non-teaching staff, were subjected to coronavirus testing at Jeevan Jyothi High School in Chikkamagaluru. They said the results of 11 people turned out to be positive.

All those infected are asymptomatic and have been put under home quarantine, he informed.

All the classes have been suspended and heath department officials have been deployed at the school to monitor the situation.

Regular off-line classes continue in Karnataka even as several schools in the state have been reporting a rise in coronavirus cases among students and staff.

Karnataka Primary and Secondary Education Minister BC Nagesh recently said the government will not backtrack from stopping exams and schools if situation arises, but he maintained that experts were of the opinion that there was no problem in holding regular off-line classes. Pandemic clusters have emerged among students of residential schools in Bengaluru rural, Mysuru and Chikkamagaluru.

Last week, at least 69 people including 59 students of the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya had tested positive in Chikkamagaluru.

Karnataka reported a total of 320 new COVID-19 cases and two fatalities on Saturday which took the overall infection tally to 30,00,105 and death count to 38,257.