18 IIT Jammu staffers test positive

Jammu: With the continuous spike in COVID-19 cases, 18 staff members in IIT Jammu, 10 patients in District Hospital (DH) Samba, and 13 persons, mostly faculty members of Jammu University (JU) tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Wednesday.

Jammu district alone has recorded the highest number of COVID-positive cases in a single day – 438.

As the cases are mounting, the civil administration and the Health Department are contemplating establishing quarantine centers across the Jammu region in all the districts to contain the spread of the virus.

In a meeting in Jammu, threadbare discussions were held on how to control the spread of the news COVID-19 variant, Omicron.

Meanwhile, 18 people including staff, faculty, and students of IIT, Jammu test positive for COVID-19, said an official.

Following the detection of the cases, IIT Jammu has decided to conduct online classes while the faculty would work from home.

“In the wake of rising cases of COVID-19 cases in Jammu, IIT Jammu has been conducting periodic COVID-19 testing of our community. Of the 300 RT-PCR tests conducted last week on the campus, 18 members of the faculty, staff, and students tested positive for the virus,” an official said.

He said that most of the students had left the campus for semester break in December.

IIT Jammu would conduct all classes online and the staff and faculty members would continue to work from home until further instructions.

Besides, four municipal committee members of Vijaypur and 10 OPD patients at DH Samba also tested positive for COVID-19.

A JU official said that during their sampling on the third day, they detected 13 new COVID-19 positive cases.

“These 13 positive cases had mild symptoms,” he said. “We conducted 230 samples in 18 departments of the campus.”