The Gombe State commissioner for education, Dr. Habu Dahiru said yesterday that even students of Government Girls Secondary School, Doma writing the ongoing West African School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), tested positive for the coronavirus disease.
The new case brings the total number of students infected with the virus in the state to eight.
A student of Government Science Secondary School Gombe had earlier tested positive for the virus.
The commissioner said the ministry, in collaboration with the state Task Force on COVID-19 had conducted 1,100 tests since schools reopened for students in exit classes.
“We gave preference to students returning from epicentre states like Kaduna, Kano, Yobe and Lagos, those places that had registered high cases of COVID-19. So far, we have tested 1,100 cases, out of which the first case was from Government Science Secondary School.”
“He was immediately evacuated and isolated. He had written his first paper – Mathematics – and he is writing Agricultural Science today (Wednesday). It will be demoralising for him if we don’t allow him to write his exams.
“The government of Gombe State…said all students found to be positive to the virus should be taken care of. We have identified another set of students. We only got the results yesterday (Tuesday).
“Seven of them have been found to test positive to the virus. (Sic) We are making arrangements to evacuate them to the isolation centre. We will not allow them to miss their papers because they tested positive.”
Similarly, a 16-year-old female student writing the examination in Kwara State tested positive for the disease.
The student whose name and school were not disclosed had been isolated at the Kwara State COVID-19/Infectious Disease Centre in Ilorin where she would be writing her papers under close supervision by an official of the West African Examination Council (WAEC).
Team lead/manager case management team, Kwara COVID-19/Infectious Diseases Centre, Dr. Kudirat Oladeji-Lambe, said the candidate wrote the Agricultural Science examination at the centre and that she was asymptomatic, stable, and fit to write the exams.
“The person in question is one of the final year senior secondary school students that have enrolled for the ongoing WASSCE and she is right here writing her exam. She is asymptomatic, which means she does not show any symptoms, and she is stable. She is just here to observe her two weeks isolation process,” Oladiji-Lambe said.
