Forty-three people, including 16 children, have tested positive for Covid-19 in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddh Nagar, the district health department said on Thursday.

The number of active cases in the district has reached 156 now, the department said.

Over 25 per cent of the new cases in the last one week have been reported among children, it noted.

According to the official figures, 43 more have tested positive for the infection since Thursday 6 AM while 10 have got cured during the period.

Of the new cases, 16 children below 18 years of age were found positive. In the last one week, there have been 167 new cases of which 44 or 26.3 per cent have been cases of children, Chief Medical Officer Dr Sunil Kumar Sharma said.

In the wake of the increasing cases, the health department had on Wednesday issued an advisory on reporting of school students catching Covid-19 or showing its symptoms in a preventive measure against the pandemic.

You are requested that if any child studying in your school has cough, cold, fever, diarrhea or any symptom of Covid-19, then you are requested to immediately inform the chief medical officer's office using help line no-1800492211 or email id mailto:cmogbnr@gmail.com" ncmogbnr@gmail.com, so that proper treatment can be provided in time, the advisory stated.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020, a total of 98,832 people in Gautam Buddh Nagar, adjoining Delhi, have tested positive for Covid-19, while 490 of them have died due to the infection, according to official data.