PESHAWAR: Eight more staffers of the educational institutions contracted cornavirus on Friday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 21 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during the last three days. Thirteen cases were detected on Thursday.

The health department in collaboration with the education department has tested 4,470 staffers and students of government schools across the province since Sept 15. The positivity rate has been two per cent.

According to a health department report, 854 samples have turned negative and the results of the remaining swabs are awaited.

The eight new cases were detected in schools of Peshawar, Tank, Charsadda and Haripur. Three districts didn’t take the samples from the target population, and were thus warned by the department to improve their performance.

Officials said the government was strictly monitoring the situation to know the level of the Covid-19 prevalence among the schools’ inmates to decide about reopening the lower level classes.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2020