In response to the Nipah outbreak, the district authority has issued an order mandating the transition of all educational institutions to online classes indefinitely. This precautionary measure, enacted under the guidance of district collector A Geetha, applies to a wide range of educational facilities, including tuition and coaching centers, which are now prohibited from conducting physical classes. The decision was reached during a meeting led by Education Minister V Sivankutty on Friday.
The operation of educational institutions within the district has been subject to restrictions under sections 26, 30, and 34 of the Disaster Management Act. According to the order, no students will be permitted to attend physical classes, extending this directive to anganwadis and madrasas as well.
However, public examinations are scheduled to proceed as planned. PWD and Tourism Minister Mohammed Riyas, also the Beypore MLA, announced during a media briefing on Saturday that schools in containment zones can arrange online classes using the G-Suite platform, with the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology of Education tasked with coordinating the necessary arrangements.
The Kerala Health department disclosed on Friday that it had identified 1,080 individuals on the contact list of confirmed positive patients and initiated the process of sample collection. The department had previously announced that all individuals on the high-risk contact list of infected individuals would be tested. In a significant step, the ICMR’s National Institute of Virology (NIV) dispatched its mobile BSL-3 (Biosafety Level-3) laboratory to Kozhikode to conduct virus testing within the district.
This marks the fourth occurrence of the Nipah viral infection in the state, having been previously detected in Kozhikode in 2018 and 2021, as well as in Ernakulam in 2019. Research conducted by the World Health Organisation and ICMR has indicated that the entire state, not just Kozhikode, is susceptible to such outbreaks.
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