COVID: Infected students had negative test report

Govt to investigate whether they were fake

By Kumaran P | NT

Bengaluru: The State government and civic bodies are in a fix after they found that the nursing college students who tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday and Friday, had negative RT-PCR test reports.

Health and Family Welfare department sources confirmed to News Trail that the nine students, all hailing from Kerala, had a negative RT-PCR report taken from their home towns. They were later found to be positive, thereby arousing suspicion of fake reports.

“If the reports are valid for 72 hours, then it’s highly impossible that they will turn positive immediately after reaching the college campus. Either they have not been screened properly or they have secured a fake negative RT-PCR report from Kerala. We will probe that soon,” said a senior official.

It might be recalled that a medical college in Dharwad and a private boarding school in Bengaluru had recently become a Covid-19 cluster, hence the coronavirus outbreak at nursing college has left everyone puzzled.

Among the nine students who returned from Kerala, three tested positive four days ago on the day of their arrival to the campus. Six more turned positive on Friday. “Three of them fell sick after reaching the campus and tests confirmed Covid-19. This provoked us to test all the students and we found more numbers,” said the health officer. Another worrying factor is that these nine students are also fully vaccinated.