Noida (UP):
Two private schools here cancelled classes on Tuesday for the next few days as a precautionary measure over the father of a student testing positive for coronavirus, officials said.
The two schools announced their closure in messages sent to the parents, a day after the Union Health Ministry reported two fresh cases of coronavirus, one of them in Delhi.
However, the district administration said it has issued no order to any school for closure and it was because of the sanitation process that the private school decided to suspend classes for three days.
The other school which has shut down till March 9 has done this on their own, the officials said.
One of the schools, where the Delhi man’s son is a primary class student, said it will remain shut from March 4 to 6.
The parent had thrown a birthday party last week for the child, triggering fears that the students who attended it might be at risk.
Samples of six people from Noida have been taken to Delhi for tests, an official said. Three of them are children– two aged 12 and the third five-year-old. The results were expected late in the evening.
The adults include a couple and the mother of two of the children, Health Department officials said.
Earlier in the day, the school said it was postponing internal examinations scheduled for Tuesday due to some “unavoidable circumstances”.
The board exams are not affected, the messages sent to the parents made clear.
The second school said it is suspending classes till March 9 and sanitising its campus. Fumigation was underway at both schools.
A Health Department team led by Noida’s chief medical officer visited one of the schools in the morning, an official said.
Meanwhile, some family members of the coronavirus-infected Delhi-based man were shifted to Safdarjung Hospital and others were asked to remain quarantined at their homes, Health Ministry sources said.
An accountant working for the man, who lives in Mayur Vihar, was also taken to Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital for tests, they said.
The Mayur Vihar resident had thrown a birthday party for his child last week and several people came in contact with him, Noida’s Chief Medical Officer Anurag Bhargava said.
He added that the school has been vacated and its premises is being sanitised.
Its students and their parents were asked to exercise caution.
The senior doctor also urged people not to panic, saying that the virus is “fragile in nature”.
The Noida administration on Tuesday launched two helplines — 8076623612 and 6396776904 — for people with any queries on coronavirus.
Bhargava said there were adequate medical facilities available with isolation wards at the Government Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS) in Greater Noida and the Super-speciality Paediatric Hospital and Post Graduate Training Institute in Noida.
The GIMS has a dedicated 10-bed facility while the super-speciality hospital has nine beds, he added.
District Magistrate B N Singh stressed that no school in Gautam Buddh Nagar has been asked by them to shut or suspend classes.
He, however, added that one private school in which the children of the man who has tested positive in the initial test for coronavirus was sanitised and hence closed for three days.
“In this school, the board exams will continue as such but the centre has been changed to St Joseph School in Greater Noida and we have got permission for that from the exam board also,” Singh added.
He said the other school which has decided to suspend classes till March 9 has done it on their own.
The administration and the Health Department have also issued an advisory to all educational institutions, including schools and colleges, industries and private firms, suggesting caution against COVID-19.
The advisory laid special focus on industries and firms which have visitors from foreign especially the countries affected by the coronavirus.
