The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has sealed the premises of St. Joseph’s School and Orphanage, Agripada, in E ward, after 22 people residing there, including students and housekeeping staff, tested positive for Covid-19 on August 25.
According to Assistant Municipal Commissioner and in-charge of E ward Manish Valanju, one of the students at the orphanage tested positive on August 23, after which the local ward office conducted a testing camp on the school premises the following day.
“The students usually live together, so it was necessary to test all the staffers and students as a precautionary measure,” Valanju told the FPJ on Thursday.
In all, 95 samples were collected from the orphanage, from the students, housekeeping and maintenance staff, of which 22 tested positive on August 25.
Valanju said that there were four children below 12 years of age among the 22 infected who had been shifted to the paediatric care centre in Nair Hospital.
The other 18 have been shifted to Richardson and Cruddas Covid Care Centre in Byculla. Twelve of these 18 are aged between 12 and18 years and six people are staff from the orphanage, all above 18 years old.
“At present we have sealed the building and health officials are monitoring the condition of the students under treatment and as of now, all of them are stable,” Valanju informed.
The local corporator from the Akhil Bharatiya Sena (ABS), Geeta Gawli, said that alongside the infected children, the sisters who looked after the inmates have also been quarantined by the BMC.
“I have sent a query to the management of the school seeking information whether or not the students and staff above 18 years old were vaccinated. Currently, the management is maintaining a low profile and after their quarantine period is over, I will visit them to check the details,” Gawli told the FPJ.
Civic officials in Mumbai have maintained that in the last two days, there has been a slight uptick in cases, with most of the fresh cases being reported in clusters from the same family.
“Until last week, we were recording the number of cases were in single digits. But in the ongoing week, we have twice recorded more than 15-20 cases in a day,” said Prashant Gaikwad, in-charge of D ward.
The G north ward, covering the Dharavi, Mahim and Dadar areas had also been recording single-digit cases since the first week of August; however on Thursday, there were 26 cases recorded here, with Dadar and Mahim recording 11 and 12 cases each.
The assistant municipal commissioner and in-charge of R south ward, Kandivli, Sandhya Nandedkar, said that so far six cases of Delta-plus had been reported from this ward, but all the patients had recovered.
