20 children and bus driver test positive

Tura, March 29: Tura is witnessing one of its largest outbreak of covid infections on a single day in one place when 20 young children who are hostel boys studying in Don Bosco Higher Secondary School at Wadanang area of Chandmari on Monday tested positive for Coronavirus during contact tracing.

How this event unfolded have been traced to the school bus driver who was found covid positive when he went to donate blood in hospital.

According to West Garo Hills deputy commissioner Ram Singh, the driver was directed to take the Covid test before donating blood when he was detected with the disease.

“He had no travel history and when we started contact tracing we found 20 out of the 45 boys in the hostel were positive,” says Deputy Commissioner Ram Singh.

This is also the first time that such a big number of covid cases have been detected among children when previously almost all cases were that of adults and the elderly.
Almost all the children are either in their pre or early teens studying in Class V.

“All of them were asymptomatic says Singh and it was only after the driver came out positive and contact tracing was undertaken that the cases were detected since none of the children displayed any of the covid symptoms.

The remaining 25 hostel boys who did not have the infection have been moved to an isolation area of the school campus and the entire complex has been turned into a containment zone.

The medical teams will also be conducting covid tests on the teachers and other occupants of the school to check against possible spread of the disease beyond the campus.

Thankfully, the number of infections have not risen or gone beyond the hostel mainly because the school is currently closed and only online exams are being conducted.
This is by far the biggest outbreak of the virus among children in the region for the first time.

It is also falling in line with the World Health Organization alert given out in December and early January where it was noted that sudden spike in covid cases was found to be taking place or getting spread from among the younger population who had discarded all covid health protocols.