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Hit by Covid-19, IISc scrambles to mitigate outbreak

Last Updated 30 July 2020, 09:05 IST

An outbreak of Covid-19 at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), has spurred the administration to enforce hasty containment measures, temporarily sealing off several departments.

At least seven departments have been sealed down for sanitization after several students tested positive.

According to sources, the first known case was a professor at SSCU who was infected by a relative on June 24. Three of the professor’s family members were also infected. The BBMP team visited IISc on the following day to carry out additional tests. Since then, there was respite until July 22, when a woman PhD student developed severe symptoms. “She was a resident of the fifth floor of the New Girls Hostel (NGH), and likely contracted the disease as early as July 15,” the source said.

“She and another student were subsequently hospitalized,” an Institute official clarified.

It is not yet known how the student had contracted the disease. The official said that contact tracing had generated a list of 60 primary contacts. “When these individuals were tested by the BBMP on July 27, 12 students who were infected,” the official said, adding that the new cases are all asymptomatic so far.

By Wednesday, the number of students infected had risen to 15, according to sources. The virus is also said to have made its way to the mess hall, with one cook and two waiters having become infected.

Sources said that IISc’s response to the outbreak has been haphazard, with no screening of visitors at the main gate. “We are taking every precaution,” said M R Chandrashekar, Head of security at the Institute.

The units sealed down are the: Department of Physics building, two departments in the Biological Sciences building, the Department of the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit (SSCU), the Electrical Communications Engineering buildings, the Centre for Infectious Disease and Biosafety Lab and the Materials Research Centre. The New Girls Hostel has been also sealed.

The new cases comprise the first outbreak of the disease at IISc, which has been heavily involved in developing solutions to combat Covid-19, including new ventilator designs, mobile testing solutions, mathematical modelling of the outbreak, drug repurposing and genomic analysis of the virus.

The Institute also operates a testing centre. Six hundred PhD students are on-campus at present.

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(Published 30 July 2020, 05:45 IST)

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