19 Santri In Jepara Regency Positive For COVID-19

Students before the COVID-19 pandemic. (Illustration). ANTARA/Akhmad Nazaruddin Lathif.

JEPARA - A total of 19 students in Bangsri District, Jepara Regency, Central Java, were confirmed positive for COVID-19, after the local health office conducted a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test on students at a local Islamic boarding school.

"Currently 19 students who have tested positive for COVID-19 are isolated in the Pecangaan Work Training Center (BLK) on Sunday, January 30," said Secretary of the Jepara District Health Office, Muh Ali in Jepara, as reported by Antara, Monday, January 31.

For the time being, he said, the activities of the Islamic boarding school were closed while waiting for further developments. "All students from various regions were sent home," he said.

He hoped that other Islamic boarding schools would anticipate so that clusters of COVID-19 transmission would not appear by prohibiting the families of students from visiting and implementing health protocols ranging from wearing masks, washing hands with soap, keeping a distance and strictly avoiding crowds.

The Head of Disease Prevention and Control of the Jepara Health Office, Eko Cahyo P, added that the PCR results for the students were known on January 30, 2022. The case started when one of the sons of the boarding school caregivers was confirmed positive for COVID-19. While the results of the health screening revealed that his mother had a travel history from Jakarta.

Then a hundred students were given a rapid antigen test and the results obtained were 17 positive reactive students for COVID-19. Then it was followed up with a PCR test with six other students who were in close contact and there were 19 students who were confirmed to be positive for the corona virus.

Based on the https://corona.jepara.go.id/ page as of January 30, 2022, it is stated that the total confirmed cases of COVID-19 are 18,746 cases, while currently there are 24 cases. Meanwhile, 17,712 cases of COVID-19 have been declared cured.