5 schools closed for two days

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, February 22

The district Education Department has ordered to close for 48 hours (as per SOPs) five schools that reported fresh cases of Covid-19 here on Sunday. The decision comes after several cases of Covid-19 were reported from a private school and four government schools.

DEO Satinder Bir Singh said the department was following the required SOPs in the case. “We had received the detailed SOPs from the Civil Surgeon that states that in case of single Covid-19 positive case, individual quarantine and sampling of the contacts of the person, who tested positive, will be done.

In case more than one case of Covid-19 is reported from a particular institution, then it must be closed for 48 hours. We will be observing the situation in the coming days and watching closely for any further cases,” he said. On Sunday, five teachers from Senior Study School and four teachers from government schools in Sultanwind, Chabba, Manawala and Jethuwal reportedly tested positive. The department has now begun the contact tracing and conducting tests on students and individuals who came in contact with positive cases.

Meanwhile, Upasna Mehra, principal, Senior Secondary School, Putlighar, said the school had got tests done on teachers reported positive in the Civil Surgeon’s report. “As soon as we received the information, we got the tests done for Covid-19 on the mentioned teachers from a private lab as well, that came out negative. We do not know how they tested positive as all of them did not show any symptoms. But we will follow the instructions given by the District Education Department and follow the protocols. We have conveyed recent test reports of teachers to all parents and we are regularly carrying out sanitization on premises besides following other safety protocols.”

With a surge in the number of fresh cases across the state, the recent development has further raised concerns among parents. Most schools have already announced the schedule for offline examinations for all classes and some are in the middle of conducting examinations for pre-board classes.