Special drive in Jhajjar to test students for Covid

Ravinder Saini

Tribune News Service

Jhajjar, September 29

The district health authorities have launched a special campaign to conduct Covid test of students of government educational institutes to detect the infection, if any, at an early stage.

The samples of 233 students of Government Polytechnic Institute and Government Post Graduate Nehru College were collected here today.

The authorities claim Jhajjar is the first district in the state to conduct Covid tests of students. Two of the six mobile vans have been dedicated to the campaign to collect samples of students from their educational institutions.

As per the guidelines of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Covid test is mandatory for teachers before rejoining schools/colleges but the condition is yet to be imposed on students, while experts say test of students is also equally important to check the spread of virus.

“Under the campaign, we have planned to initially reach out to the educational institutes located either near the containment zone or where cases of infected persons are high. The parents’ consent is mandatory for students below 18 years,” said Civil Surgeon Sanjay Dahiya.

He said the principal of the schools would be requested to obtain the parents’ consent one or two days prior to the test, which is mandatory for adult students. “The RT-PCR test of 100 students in Government Polytechnic Institute and 133 students of Government PG Nehru College has been conducted. Their report would come between 24 hours to 36 hours,” he added.

“The campaign will not only help in detecting the infection at an early stage but also ensure the monitoring of standard operating procedure like social distancing, proper sanitisation of the campus etc in educational institutes,” Dahiya said, adding that they had increased the number of Covid samples from 1,000 to 1,500 per day. Over 80,000 Covid samples had so far been taken wherein 2,449 persons had tested positive, while 21 had died of the infection.