The Dhanbad health department under the leadership of Civil Surgeon, Shyamkishore Kant has decided to carry out Covid tests at schools across the district amidst the increasing concern about the vulnerability of children during the third wave of the pandemic.

Kishore, during a meeting with health officials at his office on Tuesday, instructed them to hold a meeting with the school authorities across the district and launch the swab testing of teachers and other staff of the school on a priority basis.

Talking to The Telegraph Online Kant said, “We have already forwarded a letter to the District Education Officer, Prabala Khes in this regard to cooperate with the health department personnel for ensuring the proper testing of the teachers and staff as soon as possible.”

“However, we have also made preparations to hold meetings with the school authorities on our own as soon as possible to ensure launching the testing process in schools by next week,” added Kant.

Divulging more details, Kant said, “The focus of the drive would be on vaccination also as we will instruct the school authorities that no staff of the school interacting with the students remain unvaccinated and their swab testing will also be conducted.”

“Though, we will not conduct the swab testing of students in schools at large as this will lead to panic among the students and may lead to decrease in students attendance but their thermal scanning and symptom analysis would be conducted by health workers and if anyone is found with influenza like symptoms then only his swab testing would be carried out,” he said.

“We at the same time are also planning to increase the Covid testing at different places of the district including the traffic check posts of the district besides the regular testing conducted at the bus depot of Dhanbad and at Dhanbad Railway station as part of the comprehensive plan to increase the testing process across the district,” said Kant.

“We will send letter to Om Prakash Yadav, District Transport Officer in day or two to ensure the stoppage of Buses at the Bus depot campus at Bartand campus itself to ensure the covid testing of all passengers as we have received complaints of buses stopping outside the Bus Depot to skip the testing process of passengers,” he said.

When asked whether there is any sign of increase in Covid graph in the district, he said that any perceptible increase in Covid testing can be ascertained only if the graph remains high even after increased testing of more than 4000 tests per day.