PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is likely to stop coronavirus screening in schools if the current low incidence of the virus continues by the middle of the current month, officials say.

They, however, told Dawn that the final decision about it would be taken by the National Command and Operation Centre, which had ordered the countrywide Covid-19 screening in educational institutions ahead of their reopening.

According to officials, the province began the coronavirus screening in schools on Oct 15 and has so far diagnosed 203 students, teachers and other staff members of the educational institutions with the virus.

They said a total of 20,720 samples had been collected from schools and 16,544 of them turned out to be negative for Covid-19 and the lab results of 3,973 were awaited.

The officials said the coronavirus positivity ratio in schools was 1.22 per cent, which was normal and wasn’t a cause of worry.

Officials say final decision about it will be taken by NCOC

They, however, said confirmed patients should isolate themselves at home and stay away from the elderly people and those with underlying medical conditions.

The officials said the confirmed patients were totally asymptomatic and were only the carrier of the virus, who were on the safe side but could infect the vulnerable population.

They said currently, the authorities were testing 1,700 people in educational institutions for coronavirus daily.

“We are selecting a cluster of schools from which students and staff members are tested randomly. We started off in the middle of Oct with 1,500 tests daily in 14 districts and has extended the screening to 17 districts,” an official said.

He, however, said the testing cost was very high as Rs5,000 was being spent on one sample.

Officials said the government wanted to comply with the NCOC directives regarding screening in schools but the situation was far better compared with that of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan and therefore, the collection of samples had been reduced in the high-risk districts of Peshawar, Mardan, Abbottabad and Swat to include more districts in the drive.

They said the number of daily tests had come down from 300 to 150 on average due to the low incidence of Covid-19.

The officials said more districts, especially merged tribal ones, were being covered to ascertain the situation regarding the prevalence of the virus.

They said the authorities had so far covered three merged districts, including Khyber, Bajaur and Kurram, where the Covid-19-related situation was normal.

The officials said the health department had planned to extend the screening programme to all 35 districts before Oct 15 on the basis of which recommendation could be made to the NCOC to stop testing in the province if the current case trend continued.

They, however, said testing in general population would continue as usual despite the decreasing number of confirmed cases.

The officials said the number of suspected patients was decreasing but the sentinel sites established in every district headquarters hospitals would continue to screen the symptomatic people for the next few months.

They said 37,847 Covid-19 cases had been reported in the province since the onset of the pandemic in March and of them, 36,114 had recovered and only 471 were active.

The officials said the province had registered 1,260 deaths from coronavirus but the number of cases had dropped to 40 per day on average and therefore, the health department wanted to discontinue screening in schools and focus on the general population.

They, however, said the ultimate decision in that respect would be taken by the NCOC.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2020