Schools not responsible for sudden spike in Noida’s Covid cases: officials

Officials said that schools cannot be held responsible for the sudden spike in Covid-19 cases in Noida.

Noida: A total of 23 children were found positive among the active Covid-19 cases of Noida, officials said on Wednesday adding that of the 33 new cases reported, 10 were children while 23 were adults.

Of the 33 new Covid-19 cases reported in Noida on Wednesday, 10 were children while 23 were adults. (Representational Image/PTI)

Additionally, 13 children were reported positive by Khaitan School in Noida’s Sector 40 two days ago. This takes the total tally of Covid positive children to 23 in the district. As of now there are 90 active cases in Gautam Budh Nagar, taking the district’s total tally to 98,743.

While there is a sudden spike in Covid numbers, officials say that schools cannot be held responsible for the increase.

“Of the 23 active cases of children now, 13 were reported from Khaitan School. These were also cases reported over the past few days and did not come all at once. The rest 10 were uploaded by labs and we did not get any information from any school. Also, in today’s report there are over 20 adults. It is very likely that they got infected at their workplace or while travelling and infected the children later. So, we cannot say that there is a sudden increase because of children attending schools,” said Dr Sunil Sharma, chief medical officer, Gautam Budh Nagar.

He added that testing across the district has been increased and over 3,000 samples are taken daily. In the past 15 days, the daily new cases had started declining and were in single digits. The active cases fell below 50 on March 30. However, there has been an increase in cases in the past three days. On Sunday, 15 new cases were reported. This was reduced to three on Monday and increased again to 20 on Tuesday and 33 on Wednesday.

“We have seen as a trend that there is always an increase in cases in Noida, after cases start increasing in Delhi. This is because there is consistent inter-city interaction between people in both cities. People often travel from Noida to Delhi for work and other business,” said Dr Sharma.