Bengaluru civic agency to identify students with COVID symptoms

Team Udayavani, Sep 16, 2021, 9:32 AM IST

Bengaluru: With the reopening of schools and colleges, the city civic agency has decided to identify school-going children showing COVID-19 like symptoms for more than two days to control the spread of the disease.

The Chief Commissioner of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, Gaurav Gupta, on Wednesday said he has asked school managements in Bengaluru to check for Covid19 in children with symptoms persisting for more than two days to control the spread of the virus in the city.

In this regard, he held a meeting with paediatric and technical expert committee members on the appropriate steps to be taken towards containing COVID-19 in BBMP limits.

The meeting discussed the precautions to be taken to prevent coronavirus among children, how to conduct COVID-19 tests and separate bed arrangements for them in hospitals.

Gupta asked all the schools to identify nodal officers who should work in coordination with the health officer at the Primary Health Centre that falls in the same area as the school.

“Students with symptoms persisting for more than two days must be asked not to attend school. If the information of children with symptoms is provided to PHC, a team of health officials should visit their houses and conduct tests,” Gupta said.

He said RT-PCR tests were being conducted in hospitals for affected children and most have tested negative.

In this regard, guidelines would be issued to all hospitals on conducting tests for children with symptoms for more than two days and children who are hospitalised due to other diseases, he said.

Gupta also stressed the need to vaccinate those who come in contact with school-going children to keep everyone safe.

Stating that the COVID-19 infection was not much prevalent among children in the city, he pointed out that 7.21 per cent infection was found in children aged between 0 and 12 years and 8.21 per cent in 13 to 18-year-old children.

He said children often have symptoms such as fever, common cold and cough during the period of infection and are cured within a week.

The meeting with the committee of technical experts also discussed Sero Survey and Genome Sequencing.

The Chief Commissioner said the committee experts have requested detailed information on the sero survey and the report would be released after collecting more information.

Gupta said the Genome Sequencing has shown more number of delta strains and added that the experts” committee has advised ascertaining if any other variant is found in the city.