29 school students test positive for COVID-19 in West Bengal`s Nadia district

New Delhi: 29 school students in West Bengal's Nadia district have tested positive for COVID-19, officials informed on Thursday (December 23, 2021). 

As per the latest reports, 13 male and 16 female students of the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in Kalyani have contracted the virus. The students are currently under home isolation and the district authorities are monitoring their situation. 

Earlier on Wednesday, West Bengal's COVID-19 tally rose to 16,28,464 after 534 fresh cases were recorded. The state currently has over 7,400 active coronavirus cases, while 16,01,326 people have recovered from the disease so far.

The state's coronavirus death toll rose to 19,696 as eight more patients succumbed to the infection. Kolkata and its neighbouring North 24 Parganas district reported three fresh fatalities each, while Hooghly and Purba Bardhaman registered one death each.

Meanwhile, two foreign returnees, who had tested positive for COVID-19, were found to have been infected by the Omicron variant, a senior health official said on Wednesday.

One of them had returned from Nigeria and the other from the United Kingdom.

"We have received genome sequencing results for three samples today and among them, two were positive for Omicron strain. The other was suffering from the delta variant," the official said.

The duo is undergoing treatment in the city, he added.

Earlier, a seven-year boy who had returned to the state from Abu Dhabi via Hyderabad had tested positive for the Omicron strain.