NEW DELHI, Dec 14: The country’s one of the premier technical educational institutions, the IIT-Madras has been shut down for an indefinite period on Monday after 104 students and staff members tested Corona positive.
Both the Tamil Nadu health department and the IIT management said they were yet to identify the source of the outbreak.
As per local reports, the students had claimed there had been overcrowding in the hostel mess and that could have led the infection to spread. This is one of the biggest clusters that has emerged in Chennai after the state government permitted educational institutions to function from December 7.
In the last 10 days, 71 residents of IIT-Madras tested positive for COVID-19 and on Monday 33 more were found to be infected.
Addressing reporters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan said, “We have taken 447 samples till now. The positivity rate is around 20 per cent now. People need not panic, we are doing aggressive testing and trying to curb the spread.”
He said those admitted to King’s Institute in Guindy were stable now and the government has ordered management to close down the mess. “The students have been instructed not to leave their rooms. The management will provide them food and any necessary items at their doorstep. All the district collectors have been instructed to monitor rest of the educational institutions across the state. The spread of the infection is higher at the eating place, so I request people to maintain distance while eating. We are constantly monitoring the situation, the IIT management is also co-operating well with us,” he said.
Following the outbreak, the institution has decided to close all the departments temporarily including all the centres, labs, and library. In a press release, the IIT management said, “The Institute has been functioning on limited capacity with only 10% students in the hostels. Symptomatic students have been sent to Covid care centres.”
“IIT Madras has been permitting research scholars who need to do experimental work to return to campus in a cautious manner — with a 14-day quarantine and testing of each returnee,” the statement read. “Our capacity to quarantine (with room service) is limited, and this limits the rate at which we can bring back scholars to the hostels.”
According to the officials, a total of 700 students are currently staying on the campus and they are accommodated across nine hostels with less than 20 per cent capacity occupied in each.
Meanwhile, India’s daily new COVID-19 cases fell below 30,000 for the third time this month taking the total virus caseload to 98.84 lakh, while the number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 93.88 lakh, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Monday.
The total coronavirus cases mounted to 98,84,100 with 27,071 infections being reported in a day. The death toll rose to 1,43,355 with 336 new fatalities, the data updated at 8 a.m. showed.
The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 93,88,159 pushing the national recovery rate to 94.98%, while the COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.45%.
The COVID-19 active caseload remained below 4 lakh for the eighth consecutive day.
There are 3,52,586 active coronavirus infections in the country which comprises 3.57% of the total caseload, the data stated.
Reports from Delhi said the SpiceHealth had signed a memorandum of understanding with premier research organisation CSIR-CCMB to launch dry swab RT-PCR tests in the company’s mobile testing labs. “The dry swab testing method will be a game-changer in testing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The method is safer, faster and cheaper than the current testing method without compromising the quality of test results,” Rakesh Mishra, Director, CSIR-CCMB said..
The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) is a constituent lab of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
“Over the past few weeks, SpiceHealth has launched five mobile testing laboratories across Delhi-National Capital Region, with 10 more labs in the pipeline for the next two weeks,” its CEO Avani Singh said. The Indian Council of Medical Research had last month approved the dry swab RT-PCR test developed by the CSIR-CCMB.
(Manas Dasgupta)
