Covid infection of 229 students in Maharashtra school hostel raises new fears

The cluster infection took place well within the hostel as the students had just come and all of them could possibly not have brought the virus from home simultaneously. And this speed and reach of the virus was not noticed during March-September when the epidemic in the country was terribly devastating. There were two similar instances reported about two residential buildings in Bengaluru last week. These may point to new variants of coronavirus.

Besides, the episode runs counter to an established fact that children don't catch the corona infection so easily and are not largely vulnerable.

MUMBAI, Feb 25: Two hundred and twenty nine students in a school hostel in Washim in Maharashtra have tested positive for coronavirus. The hostel belongs to Bhavna Public School, a tribal residential school located in Degaon.

As the school reopened, the hostel residents hailing from distant places arrived in the hostel by February 14.

It is not known if the cluster infection of such a large number in just about a week's time could possibly have been caused by a new highly infectious variant of coronavirus similar to the one rampaging the UK for some time now as such an episode was not seen when covid was raging in the country till mid-September. Similar cases were reported from Bengaluru where two buildings at two different places had to be sealed and declared as containment zones last week.

It is not reasonable to assume that all the 229 students came from home infected simultaneously. There is reason to believe that the cluster infection took place well within the hostel, and that happened very fast.

In view of the fresh wave of covid epidemic that showed signs of a surge early this month, the school authorities conducted a test. When in a random testing 30 students were found infected, all the remaining students were tested and a total of 229 were declared found positive but all of them were asymptomatic.

The students belonged to Classes 5 to 9. The 98 non-infected students have been placed under quarantine, while the infected ones were isolated and are being treated in the hostel itself separately. According to News18, 151 students belong to Amravati, 55 Yavatmal and the rest are from Washim, Hingoli, Buldhan and Akola.

As the second wave began, the State Government had imposed restrictions on gatherings and on inter-State travel.

Meanwhile, the State reported 8,807 covid cases on Wednesday, taking its total infection count to 21,21,119. On October 21 there were 8,142 cases and after that the cases had started declining fast. There were 80 deaths on Wednesday, the State’s fatality count rising to 51,937.

Since February 10 new cases began to mount again in the State. The State had recorded 6,112 infections on February 19, 6,281 on February 20 and 6,971 on February 21, 5,210 on February 22 and on February 23 there were 6,218 cases.

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) recorded the highest 2,018 new cases among divisional circles in the State on Wednesday. Nashik, Pune, Akola and Nagpur divisional circles reported over 1,000 new cases each during the day. Pimpri-Chinchwad, Aurangabad and Yavatmal also recorded a high.