Nineteen students from a boys’ residential school at Kotturu village in G. Madugula mandal of Visakhapatnam district tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. All the students are asymptomatic and healthy, according to officials.

P. Leela Prasad, Additional District Medical and Health Officer, Paderu, said that the Health Department conducted random COVID-19 tests on students at the school on Wednesday, after which it emerged on Thursday that 19 of them had contracted COVID-19. He added that all the students who tested positive are around 14 years of age and are studying in classes VIII to X. Close contacts were also tested, he added.

“Since many of the students do not have the facility of separate toilets and rooms in their houses, we are sending them to the District Hospital in Paderu where they would be given proper treatment and medication. All the students are completely healthy and asymptomatic,” Dr. Leela Prasad said.

Sanitation activities are being taken up at the school. Officials are yet to take a call on whether or not to close the school for 10 days.

Since the reopening of the school, till date, nearly 35 to 40 students have tested positive for COVID-19 in Visakhapatnam district, sources in the Health Department said.

45 new cases

The district has recorded 45 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours ending Thursday morning, taking the cumulative tally to 1,56,855. The death toll also rose to 1,085 after one more person succumbed to the infection in the last 24 hours.

As many as 49 persons who were undergoing treatment for COVID-19 have recovered in the last 24 hours, according to a COVID-19 bulletin released on Thursday. The number of recoveries increased to 1,54,816, while the active cases stand at 954.