With coronavirus cases on the rise in India, schools in Delhi have been instructed to stay closed till the end of the month.
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia took to Twitter on Thursday to announce that all primary schools in the city would remain shut as a "precautionary measure to prevent the possibility of spread of COVID-19 amongst our children".
This, he added, applied to all primary schools, be it a private school, a government run school or one that was aided or run by the Municipal Corporations.
COVID-19 has recently spread like wildfire in India with nearly 30 cases being recorded this week. Many others have been quarantined.
The Shriram Millennium School in Noida decided to postpone its annual examination and close the school temporarily, following a parent of one of its student testing positive for COVID-19.
Soon, it was revealed that the man in question had hosted a birthday party for his child days before his diagnosis. This had been attended by other children who had then gone on to rejoin their classes. As a result, two schools in Noida were thrown into panic. The schools were shut in order to fumigate and sanitise everything.
But this man's footprints go beyond the schools of the Delhi-NCR region. He had travelled to Rome and Budapest and then to Delhi via Vienna. He had taken an Air India flight, and in the days leading to the diagnosis, visit the Hyatt for a meal, hosted the aforementioned birthday party in Agra and more. More recently, several of his family members have been quarantined and some were shifted to the Safdarjung Hospital for tests after they showed symptoms of the virus.
As of Thursday, the Health Minister told the Parliament that at least 28,529 people have been brought under community surveillance and are being monitored.
(With inputs from agencies)
