More than 700 students test positive at Manipal college

With 704 students testing positive for Covid-19 at Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), the Udupi district administration has sealed the campus. The MIT cluster is the single driving factor of Covid cases in the district, said the district officials.

The institute was first declared a containment zone on March 17.

Udupi, Bidar, Bengaluru Urban, Kalaburagi, Dakshina Kannada and Tumakuru are the worst-hit districts in the state. The said districts have weekly positivity rate higher than the state average of 1.9% last week, according to the State Covid-19 War Room report on Thursday (March 25).

Udupi’s positivity rate is more than 4%, and 85% of the district’s active cases are from the MIT campus while the rest of the 15% cases are spread all over the district, the district administration said.

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On Friday, Udupi (210), Tumakuru (126) and Kalaburagi (109), were the only three districts, apart from Bengaluru Urban, to report fresh infections in three digits. The state capital recorded 1,490 new Covid-19 cases in the day.

Dr Prashant Bhat, District Surveillance Officer, Udupi, said, “The positivity rate of the district for March, by and large, is 4%. The positivity rate at MIT campus alone is 14%. There are no other containment zones in the district. Excluding MIT, the district has a positivity of 1.35%, which is less than the state’s average.”

On Thursday, out of 145 cases in Udupi district, 111 cases were from MIT campus alone. On Friday as well, with 184 more people in the campus testing positive for the infection, MIT accounted for over 87% of the total cases reported from Udupi district.

“We have travellers from Kerala and Maharashtra, who are contributing to cases. In March, the students didn’t observe social distancing. Parties will obviously spread the disease. We have traced roughly 1,500 contacts who have to be tested on day 7. There’s a high chance they may test positive because they may be in incubation period,” Dr Bhat said.

Tumakuru District Health Officer Dr M B Nagendrappa told DH, “Daily, 50,000-60,000 people travel to Bengaluru. The cases are rising in Tumakuru city while it’s less in rural areas. We are ramping up testing and contact tracing accordingly in urban areas.”

Kalaburagi District Surveillance Officer Dr Shivakumar Deshmukh said factors driving up cases in the district include interstate travellers and marriages. “We have staggered cases and more so in urban areas. It is not in any particular location. One factor is our proximity to the Maharashtra border with buses and trains plying there. Kalaburagi and Bidar are close to the Telangana border also. We are taking 4,000 to 5,000 samples everyday,” he said.